


Successor

by DeAnno



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Mayor Summers, Multi, Post-Season/Series 03, Quest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 75,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23077183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeAnno/pseuds/DeAnno
Summary: The Mayor's dead. Long live the Mayor.Buffy finds herself dragooned into Wilkins' old job in the chaos following Graduation Day, but will she and the rest of the Scoobies be able to keep Sunnydale in one piece? How about preventing the end of the world, again? And most importantly, can they manage to get reelected?
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	1. S3.5E1: Victors I

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crosspost of a Choose Your Own Adventure style quest hosted at Sufficient Velocity. For those looking to participate in the quest, the link is here: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/successor-btvs.53169/
> 
> The story is broken into episodes and further into updates; at the end of each update, the readers democratically chose a course of action for the next one (known as a 'vote'.) I'll be posting each update as a chapter, sometimes with the corresponding vote chosen at the start for clarity. I plan to post individual episodes on AO3 over a period of time until the large backlog of content is expended.
> 
> There are some multimedia elements used in the quest (mostly pictures) which I've chosen to remove from the AO3 version, mostly due to a lack of spoiler boxes, but they shouldn't detract from readability.

“Gotta say Xand, happy you changed my mind,” Buffy acknowledged. After the battle at Graduation, she’d been ready to go right to bed, but Xander had campaigned for a spontaneous trip to the Bronze. They’d gotten a nice table, and the music was already hopping. The dance floor wasn’t just crowded with other high school seniors giddy at surviving, but also underclassmen optimistic at the prospect of an exploded high school, and college students eager to see what all the excitement was about.

“This place is going to seem so lame once I’m used to Hollywood. I guess it deserves one last chance at glory.” Cordelia hadn’t really been that hard to convince either. Buffy was kind of surprised at how much she’d gotten into the whole group project thing lately, but maybe her impending absence was making the heart grow fonder. Cordelia liked being on top, and in LA that was far from certain, whatever she might be projecting in her bravado.

“This is a big improvement over some of my past memories of the Bronze, actually.” Willow had her chair smooshed up against Oz’s, and was wrapped up in the crook of his arm. “I can’t quite put my finger on what’s different, but I just feel so much more secure,” she said with a smirk on her face. Oz just looked on, smiling bemusedly.

Xander nodded, happy he’d read the needs of the group. “I’d say we should go sample the fine wares this establishment has to offer, but the bar looks a little crowded right now. It’ll probably clear up sometime before the millennium though.” Cordy was scoffing at the drama and about to interject, but someone else did first.

An overweight guy in a beat up suit swept up, expertly navigating the crowd with a large platter of drinks and snacks in hand. Just as Buffy was wondering which table tipped enough to get service in a crowd like this, he laid it down on the empty table the group was sitting at. “On the house!” Giving Buffy a quiet nod (there was something about it she couldn’t quite read) he slipped back into the crowd before anyone could react to the strange occurrence.

“Was that the owner?” Willow asked.

“You get free stuff here?” said Cordy.

Not to be outdone, Xander chimed in. “I think these are actual drinks. Like, the alcoholic kind.”

Oz raised an eyebrow at that, and took a sip of a pink one that happened to be in front of him. “The alcoholic kind,” he answered dryly.

“Huh.” Buffy wasn’t sure what to think, so she took a drink of a blue nearby. It was way stronger than she expected, but she made a face and gamely swallowed it anyway.

“I mean, maybe he heard that we’re the reason all these customers are here, and not, you know, dead?” despite remarking on the drinks first, Xander munched on a chicken finger instead.

“Maybe,” Buffy replied. She’d saved a lot of people from vampires here before though, and nothing like this had ever happened.

“Well, I mean, whatever the reason, if we don’t deserve a little recognition now, when will we?” Willow resolutely took another of the drinks and knocked it back. Without missing a beat, she continued, “I mean, we do a lot. This is nice. Nice is good.”

“Nice is good!” Xander agreed, latching onto a positive line of thought.

Cordy had sampled a glass too. “This is the good stuff you know. And forget paying, we didn’t even give them Fake IDs.” She had a speculative look on her face. Buffy suspected she wasn’t the only one having second thoughts about this. “You don’t think it’s drugged, do you?”

“Drugged!” Willow slammed her (totally empty) glass on the table like it was a wild animal. “You don’t think they’d do that here? With everyone around? I mean, the Mayor did have a huge amount of influence in the town, and he always planned ahead with lots of contingencies, and he was really angry about Faith, and he didn’t have any problem fighting dirty, as long as he didn’t get literally dirty, and -”

“Not drugged.” Oz interrupted, calming Willow with a pat on the shoulder. “The nose knows.”

“Oh. Ok.” Willow started on another drink. Sometimes Buffy worried about Willow’s hidden depths.

Conversation on the topic continued, and Buffy spaced out a bit to the charmingly amateur music and the banter of her friends. She supposed college would be a fresh start, but she would really miss everyone being here together. There would still be Willow and Oz right on campus, but Cordy would be gone, never to return to their unfortunate town. Xander would still be around next year, but his impending summer trip was going to put him out of reach for a while, and even afterwards, he wasn’t going to UC Sunnydale and she worried he’d be disconnected.

Then there was Giles. His library was exploded, even if he had saved all the books, and he didn’t have a Council job anymore either. She worried a little about what he would do, but figured he must have something worked out. Giles was always responsible (these days) and he didn’t just leave things to chance.

She resolutely avoided thinking about Angel, and that included staring into the space above the one empty seat at their table. It did double duty by helping her avoid thinking about Faith too.

Eventually, a slightly unsteady Willow wanted to go dancing with Oz, so the group moseyed out to the floor. Buffy wasn’t exactly in a dancing mood herself, but figured with this many people around there could be some vampires lurking, looking for easy meals. It was annoying, but a Slayer’s work was never done.

Once she got to work though, her unofficial patrol through the familiar crooks and corners of the Bronze was almost pleasant. Dancing students from the graduating class toasted her as she cruised by, and the whole affair would’ve felt nostalgic if it had ever actually been fun like this before. Even better, most of them seemed to be paying attention in a way she wasn’t used to. They were visibly sticking together, and her keen eyes noticed a few of them still had melee weapons from graduation concealed under their outer layers. She found herself giving them approving nods, and even complimented the fashion sense of one girl who was using a pair of daggers to improve the lines of her belt.

All their surprising vigilance was for naught though, as the Bronze was surprisingly empty of vampires tonight. Buffy figured the summer ennui might have already set in, but it was also possible that the vampire community as a whole was discouraged by their defeat earlier today, or even that so many armed students in one place had dampened enthusiasm for hunting the Bronze tonight.

When she finally reached her familiar lookout of the balcony, another surprise was waiting. Jonathan Levinson was already overwatching the dance floor, and he greeted her enthusiastically. “Hi Buffy! Everything seem ship-shape?”

Something about the way he said it was a little unexpected to Buffy. Everyone seemed to be looking for her approval tonight. Anyways, there was no harm in a little friendly conversation. “Things are good. Happy people, zero vampires.”

Jonathan nodded. “We were worried about a counterattack what with all the ones that escaped the battle. There was actually one here before you arrived, but we cornered it outside and we don’t think it was even part of that first group anyway.”

“Cornered it?” Buffy was a little taken aback, though she supposed they had been fighting already, earlier today. Somehow it seemed different for it to be happening outside the context of a final battle though.

“We took it by the numbers, just like Xander showed us before. Three-on-one in melee with another two as ranged support. He didn’t really seem to be expecting a fight, went down like a chump.” The change in Jonathan from depressed and suicidal a few weeks ago to eager and … slay-conscious now was definitely a change. Buffy almost thought to discourage him from getting people so actively involved, but she didn’t quite have the heart to do it on a night like this. She just nodded along.

“So, what’s next? Most people are going to be hanging around for the summer, and a lot of us are going to UC Sunnydale after that.” Jonathan seemed to assume there was a ‘next’ on the agenda. Nobody had given Buffy the memo. Maybe it was something Xander implied?

Increasingly confused about what to say, Buffy fell back on facts and supposition. “Summer’s usually pretty chill. With the Mayor dealt with, there probably won’t be another big bad for a while.”

“That’s good, should give us plenty of time to get ready,” Jonathan replied.

Buffy just nodded again. Did Xander invite Jonathan to the Scoobies at some point? Things had been pretty hectic before the battle, maybe she just missed it? Did the Scoobies usually even give out invitations? Cordelia had kind of just attached herself to them, come to think of it.

“All right then. See you around Jonathan.” Buffy wondered if all conversations with Jonathan in high places were destined to be confusing.

“Tell Cordelia I said hi!” he said impulsively, as she was leaving. She wasn’t even going to think about that one.

* * *

After a few more songs, the crew had agreed that they were all tired enough to head home, even though the Bronze seemed like it’d be staying open later than usual tonight. Conveniently, Oz had his van, so Buffy was freed of having to escort everyone to their various homes spread across town. Buffy and Cordelia were lounging in the back row while the other three discussed the artistic merits of tonight’s performers up front.

“So, the whole army thing really took off huh?” Buffy said. Maybe Cordelia had a better grasp of what was going on with Jonathan. After all, he had mentioned her.

“Way off. It all sort of just fell into place, you know? I guess most people just want to be led.” Despite her recent troubles, some parts of her outlook apparently hadn’t changed much.

“Everyone seemed very, well, keyed up at the Bronze tonight,” Buffy said. She thought she would chance dipping a toe into dangerous waters. “Jonathan said they took out a vampire all by themselves before we got there. Very proactive.”

“Well, the dweeb was pretty intense in the big battle, so I’m not surprised really.” Despite Cordy’s name-calling, there was no bite in the line. “Speaking from experience, once you go past a certain point, there’s sort of no returns? Not even with a printed receipt and the original packaging. You can’t really go back to ignoring things as easily once you start doing something about them.” She seemed a little conflicted to Buffy as she finished.

“LA isn’t safe either you know, and I’m not just talking about the gang violence,” Buffy said. “Not that I’m saying you should try to handle anything yourself, just-”

“I get it. I’m not suicidal.” She stopped and cringed at that for a second, before continuing, “But, yeah, once you know the score, even the little things can add up.”

Buffy nodded, and the conversation trailed off as Oz stopped by her house. Joyce was still gone, but Buffy had called her hotel after graduation and she’d be back sometime tomorrow. Buffy wouldn’t be able to greet her coming back though; she’d be busy.


	2. S3.5E1: Victors II

**[X] Xander said he still had to do some kind of ... fixing thing to his car before his trip. Buffy is going to go by tomorrow to lift heavy things for him and stuff.**

The annoying beeping of her alarm woke Buffy from wonderful sleep, and her flailing attack to defeat it was foiled by it being cleverly positioned not by her bedside but on the other side of the room. She winsomely adapted to this challenge, but her ballistic pillow just bounced off the back of the heavy chair the alarm was protected by. Past Buffy was a devious enemy, one who she was sad to admit usually got the better of her.

By the time she crawled out of bed and finally silenced it, she remembered why she needed to get up at 8 AM: Xander’s car repairs needed doing today. She kept telling herself that Xander was a good friend who deserved his road trip, and by the time she was halfway done with her shower she actually believed it.

After finishing her ablutions, she put on an outfit that had seen better days and set off to meet Xander at his uncle Rory’s place. The Grack’nok ichor didn’t completely come out of the top, and even though it had faded in with the green patterning a bit it’d never be the same. She figured it was appropriate for an early morning excursion and car repair, and Xander would (hopefully) be able to drive her home afterward.

It was a quiet morning as Buffy walked the familiar roads of Sunnydale, despite it being a weekday. Traffic seemed sparse, and there weren’t many people walking about either. She wondered how much the Mayor’s death, possibly classified as an “abrupt disappearance” instead by the Sunnydale-Syndromed, would affect the town’s government, and economy, and other important things. She figured it was above her pay grade; he did lots of bad things, turned into a giant snake, and then got slayed. She’d done her part.

Rory lived in a questionable neighborhood, and the way there was through the bad side of town. She didn’t notice any suspicious demon or vampire-adjacent activity, but one surprise did catch her eye. Willy’s Bar was finally all patched up from his earlier run in with the Sisterhood of Jhe a few months ago, and it definitely had a new look. It wasn’t exactly a nice look, but it was probably less of a dive than it had been? Feeling a little whimsical with yet another apocalypse just averted, she decided to poke her head in and say hi. Willy had seemed kind of broken and vulnerable the last time she saw him and she hoped he’d recovered from the experience, if only so he could serve as a source of easy information once again.

As befit the early hour, Willy’s Bar (or as the new sign proclaimed, “Willy’s Place”) was fairly empty as she walked in, but she still felt a stillness spread over it as she was noticed. Only noticing a few fairly unobjectionable demons hanging around, she decided to forestall a panic. “Just wanted to take a look at the new place, don’t mind me,” she said innocently.

She got the sense that the patrons weren’t very reassured, but nobody left. After a momentary pause, Willy greeted her with a strained expressed on his face, “Hello Ms. Summers, ah, do you like what you see?” Buffy briefly looked for her mother before realizing he was talking to her. Was this something that happened once you graduated from high school?

“Well, it’s newer. You’re still on the straight and narrow I hope? No more shady deals with murderous evil?” Buffy still remembered how Willy had sold Angel to Spike a year and a half ago, but he’d taken a lot of punishment since then and it was at least possible he’d turned over a new leaf. After all, he was human.

“Absolutely not! I even have rules now!” Willy indicated the professional looking sign to the left of the bar, which did in fact have some rules on it.

  * No Killing, Maiming, or Stealing
  * Property destroyed fighting goes double on your tab
  * All gambling to be done in the back room
  * No outside drinks (includes sucking)
  * Red menu items are at your own risk
  * Don't bring trouble to the bar
  * Seafood pricing is seasonal



“Those are definitely some rules,” Buffy agreed. She supposed he was trying, at least.

Willy seemed strangely desperate for her approval. She hadn’t even threatened him or anything. “Are they good? I mean, if you think I should put anything else-”

“No. Those are fine. I’ll be around.” Buffy turned to leave. This had been a little weird in a way that was hard to define. She’d been getting a lot of that lately.

Just before she left, Willy abruptly said, “Congratulations on the Mayor. Beating him, I mean. Everyone’s looking forward to new things.” There were a couple affirmative grunts and rushed nods from the demons in attendance to go along with that too. Maybe Mayor Wilkins had been hard on this element? They definitely weren’t very clean, but he seemed to have made exceptions about that with demons.

Buffy was a little disarmed at it all, in any case. “It was a team effort, really,” she said, because it was, and with that, she walked out.

* * *

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to fix your car Xander. I think something ate most of the parts of it that needed fixing.” When Buffy had arrived at Uncle Rory’s house, the oversized garage beside it had been open, and Xander had been fiddling under the hood of a very destroyed car. The front of it was sort of OK, but most of the back half was kind of melted and deformed, and large parts of it had been sheared off entirely. The back left wheel wasn’t even there, the car was being held up by cinder blocks on that corner. She wasn’t sure what had done all this to it, but she wouldn’t want to have to fight it in new clothing.

Xander started, having totally failed to notice her sneak up behind him, but without looking up replied, “No, no, we’re not fixing this one, we just need to salvage the engine out of it.” He poked at something deep inside cautiously with a screwdriver, then seemed to be done for now. Finally turning to Buffy, he indicated the much more intact looking car to his left and said, “We’re fixing that. Uncle Rory said I could use it all summer if I managed the engine transplant from this old wreck.”

“Engines can be transplanted?” The engine sure looked kind of stuck inside to Buffy. “That sounds kind of complicated. Do they get rejected? Do cars have a blood type? Oil type?”

“They can, and it isn’t even as hard as it sounds, but the tricky part usually is the actual moving of them from one car to another. It takes special equipment Uncle Rory doesn’t have and he didn’t want to have to pay for labor. These are actually both Firebirds, they’re just separated by a few years, so things should work fine.”

Buffy now understood her purpose here. “And I guess I’m you’re special equipment?”

Xander nodded, “One Buffy wrench, a must have in every toolbox.” He moved over to the recipient vehicle and said, “I just need to disconnect the mountings and we should be ready to take out this broken old clunker.”

Buffy looked over his shoulder as he was unscrewing some nuts and mysteriously shifting a bar around. She wondered when Xander had managed to learn so much about car repair. Maybe the whole thing before with the car wasn’t just a cry for attention? Cordelia had mentioned something about a car girl once, now that she thought about it.

“OK, all ready. Just slide it out and up, and make sure to be gentle.” Xander backed away and gave her space to work.

“Hey! I’m good at being gentle now. Many a doorknob was lost in the month after I was slayerized, but I have learned the ways of the paper mache world.” Buffy didn’t lack for precision, really, it was just that if she completely failed to pay attention in the way normal people sometimes did stuff occasionally broke. She was pretty sure the engine wouldn’t actually be very heavy, but the angle she’d be lifting at and the sheer mass of it might present a bit of a problem. “Xander, can you grab me around the shoulders for this? I think I might just need a counterweight to avoid teetering over.”

Xander hesitated for a second before saying, “Sure.” She belatedly wondered if this was some awkward boy touching thing. Too late to worry about it now, so she just pushed forward. She got a good grip by the sides, and then moved it right out smooth as a dream. It was a little awkward getting it up and around, but Xander made a good anchor and she got the thing over her head without too much wobbling. After that it was easy to get over to the corner and set it down on the concrete. “There we go. This Buffy wrench is fully armed and operational.”

Xander meanwhile had sat down and was rubbing his shoulder. Maybe she put too much weight on him? He didn’t seem too mussed up anyway. Before she could ask about it though, he spoke up, “Is everything really … all ‘fragile-do-not-bend’ to you?” She got the sense he’d never really considered it before.

“It isn’t so bad. I mean, I know my own strength, I just have to watch myself.” Buffy was actually feeling a little enthusiastic about the whole job now. Using her strength for something other than beating people up or carrying shopping bags around was novel.

Xander seemed more distracted by the current line of conversation though, and just got a pensive look on his face. She wondered what he was thinking about, but something made her hesitate to ask. After that, he started some more checking around in both cars, getting them ready for the move of the actually working engine.

Looking to change the subject, Buffy remembered the whole Jonathan issue, and decided to bring that up. “Jonathan seemed pretty hyped at the Bronze last night. He even killed a vampire with a bunch of other students before we got there, apparently.”

This seemed to cheer Xander up. “Really? I’m proud of them. They all learned the ABCs of slaying pretty fast. I didn’t have much time to go over things before the big battle and I expected casualties to be a lot worse in the vampire brawl.”

“So is Jonathan like, in the gang now? Not it’s like, this big formal thing, he just seemed very into it,” she said.

Xander weighed the question for a bit before answering. “I dunno. I didn’t think I’d even get a chance to talk to him again before I left town, but he seems like a good sort. I think he has contact info from most of the class too.”

Buffy wondered about what kind of situation would have them calling up the whole class of ‘99 again. It seemed really dangerous, but she supposed it had worked well the first time. “Well, the group is going to be a little depleted this summer,” she mused. “Cordelia’s already gone as of this morning, Willow’s super busy with all this orientation stuff her parents set up for her at UC Sunnydale, and Giles told me that Wesley crawled back to England after getting his cast on last night. With you on the open road it’ll just be Giles and me playing Bridge half the time.”

“I thought Bridge took four people,” he said.

“Even worse then! But I guess we might try to work Jonathan in if there’s a nice, calm, safe case to look at.” She thought about this statement for a second. “Not that we ever get those.”

“Anyways Buff, I think we’re ready for round two.” He paused. “Do you want me to brace you again?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Sure.” She got into the same position she had before. This time was going to be a little more tricky, since she would have to put the engine back into another car afterwards, but she was confident it would go fine. She got a good grip on it again, slid it around, and was in the middle of lifting it up. Before she got it all the way out though, there was an unforeseen interruption.

“Xander, you’re doing the work here? I thought your friends would tow them to a garage?” The confused voice of Uncle Rory accompanied the through door to the house itself opening. Buffy was in a bit of a compromised position.


	3. S3.5E1: Victors III

**[X] Buffy plays it cool, and just follows through with taking out the engine and lifting it up. Sunnydale syndrome might confuse the guy even confronted with this right in his garage, and if it doesn’t, what’s the worst that can happen anyway? It’s not like she’s secret identity girl.**

Buffy almost hesitated, but then she just went with it. She honestly couldn’t be bothered trying to keep secrets from random civilians. She heaved the engine up over her head again, and then Xander let her shoulders go and she waltzed over to the intact Firebird. She was getting the hang of doing this pretty fast and didn’t even think she’d need help to slot it in safely; she could just sort of leverage her body against the car to avoid becoming teakettle Buffy. Maybe car engines counted as a melee weapon to her Slayer powers?

Anyways, she slotted it right into where it was supposed to be, and then stretched her arms back behind her neck loosening her shoulders again. She was almost regretful there were no more engines to cart around. Meanwhile, the guy she supposed was Xander’s Uncle Rory was quiet and staring, and Xander was kind of just looking on without knowing what to do.

Rory Harris recovered quickly however. “Huh. I guess those aren’t as heavy as I thought they were in this model.” After thinking for a second though, he continued, “That’s still an impressive set of arms you’ve got on you young lady. And an impressive everything else too, I might add!”

Xander was already grimacing, but Buffy had dealt with way worse than this before. “All you have to do is eat your Wheaties every day,” she replied.

Rory walked over to the now mostly complete Firebird and took a speculative look under the hood. “Wheaties and something a little extra maybe,” he said in a low tone. “But who am I to judge? Find your niche, that’s what I say!”

Buffy was a little annoyed at the implication she was juicing, but supposed it was a fair assumption to make under the circumstances. It was certainly more logical than her mom’s total denial of everything in years past. The thought was serious eww though, muscles in all the wrong places. Rory ignored the expression momentarily passing over her face however, and continued on.

“It’s good to see kids your age doing honest work like this, whatever other hobbies you have. This country was built on cars, everyone should know how to run ‘em and how to fix ‘em. With the criminal element in this town getting out of control, all you teenagers could probably use an early morning doing something like this.” Rory seemed to be settling into a good mindless ramble, and Buffy was willing to just let it ride.

Xander’s curiosity got the better of him though, and he asked, “The criminal element?”

“Well, of course!” Rory said. “They attacked your graduation just yesterday didn’t they? All kinds of rumors have been flying around about that. People are saying there was a gang war at the school, and the Mayor died in an explosion!” Rory stopped after saying that, looking speculative again “You two weren’t involved in that were you?”

Buffy normally would’ve been denial girl, but something about the situation made her want to say something. Maybe not the truth, but somehow it didn’t seem right to let the graduating class seem just as villainous as the Mayor’s thugs. She was sick of feeling like a criminal just for doing her job. “We were involved actually. A … gang did attack graduation, and we had to fight them off to keep people safe. It was bad, and some kids … got pretty hurt. But if we hadn’t fought them, it would’ve been even worse.”

Rory apparently wasn’t expecting nearly so straight an answer, and was taken a little aback. “Ah. I didn’t mean to impugn, I know Xander’s a good sort at least. But that ties in with why I’m back so early, actually.” It was true that Xander had told Buffy his uncle wouldn’t be around today. “I showed up at the Lodge for the meeting today, and the place was wrecked. Windows and doors smashed, furniture destroyed, and they even stole some of our stuff. They practically took out a whole wall just to get away with the Yeti!”

“Wait, you have a Yeti?” Xander said. “Yetis seem like a strange thing to have.”

“Well, I mean, obviously it’s a fake, but it’s really well made. Sort of the unofficial prize of our whole taxidermy collection. I know my taxidermy, and whoever put it together really put in the work. Perfectly detailed, and fifteen feet if it’s an inch. But they carted it away, along with a couple of other faked-up cryptids we had. Sort of the unofficial theme of the Lodge.”

Xander and Buffy looked at each other. “You don’t think-” Buffy said, but Xander interrupted her.

“Of course not. That would be silly. Fifteen feet tall.” Xander did not seem as sure as his words implied. With some dread, he asked, “What else was missing?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Rory said. “I know the Sasquatch and his Chupacabra were gone, and I don’t think I saw any of the Little Men around either. It’s almost like all the thieves wanted were the joke pieces, the real taxidermy was mostly left alone. That’s why we thought it must have been kids. So you can see why I’m a little agitated: the town seems to be going to the wolves, the Mayor’s either dead or missing in action, and the police station won’t even take our calls! They just told us they don’t have time for ‘petty vandalism’ right now and hung up! What are our property taxes even paying for?”

Buffy felt she should have known the comfortable calm that had come over Sunnydale this morning was just a sham, like everything else on the Hellmouth. “Look, we have a lot of experience with, ah, gang members, and maybe it’d be best if we came to take a look at the situation.” Buffy was afraid she’d be dismissed out of hand, but that wasn’t the reaction she got at all.

“Really? Well, I guess having a different gang look into it is better than nothing if the police aren’t doing their jobs anymore.” Rory belatedly seemed to realize that might not be taken the best way. “Err, not that I think you kids are in one of the bad gangs. You know what I mean. I’d really appreciate it.”

“I should make a call, there’s someone else who should have a look at the situation,” Buffy said. It would take too long to round up the whole group, but Giles wasn’t busy today and should be able to meet them at the scene. “I don’t think the new Xandermobile is ready yet, but can you drive us there?” Hopefully Rory wasn’t going to end up in over his head. Xander was probably attached to him.

* * *

The Lodge was in a picturesque location towards the edge of town, next to some woods with a creek running past it. The Lodge itself however, was in anything but a picturesque state. If anything, Rory had undersold the extent of the damage, with the warm lines of the building broken up by the smashed wall and other miscellaneous destruction.

Giles was just arriving as they got there, and they met getting out of their cars. “My word!” He was about to continue, but seemed to think better of it with Rory there and simply introduced himself. “Rupert Giles, librarian of the late Sunnydale High. I’m part of Buffy and Xander’s group to oppose ah, gang violence in the area.”

“Thanks for coming out.” Rory shook Giles’ offered hand, taking the bizarre circumstances in stride. He shook his head and led them up to the destroyed wall, which now served as the easiest entrance to the unlucky building. “This is … was our Great Hall. We had the stolen pieces on display in the back.” The exposed room was large and oval, with heavy tables and chairs lying about haphazardly. Large portraits covered the walls, and several mundane examples of stuffed critters were positioned around the edges of the room. There was a raised stage in the back, split into an area for speaking and a display exhibit behind it. It was empty however, aside from some knocked down fake trees and other detritus.

Before they went in, Xander focused on the ground. “I think I’m seeing what might be a trail. Uncle Rory, you know the area right? Maybe we can see where this goes.” He agreed and they both wandered back off towards the creek. Buffy was thankful that Xander got him out of the way so she could talk to Giles without feeling bad about abusing Rory’s tender ears with any more ugly truth.

Giles started commenting as they moved inside. “A Yeti, truly surprising. None have been spotted in the wild since 1973, and several prominent researchers at the Council think they’re extinct. They’re supposed to be fairly peaceful in most cases, but this one may well be roused into a rage state.”

“I guess you’ll be able to get another one up on them with this then. You know, if we ever find it.” Buffy said.

“Somehow I don’t think a fifteen foot tall giant will manage to elude us for long. I’m actually just as concerned about the other creatures, assuming they’re even correctly identified. For that matter, we don’t even know how they came to be here, and why they’ve been inactive for so long. This whole event is quite the mystery.” Giles looked around the room for evidence as he talked. “I must say, it’s somewhat refreshing to be dealing with honest monsters again, as opposed to dishonest politicians.”

“Sorry to disappoint Giles, but it looks like we aren’t done with Wilkins yet.” Buffy indicated one of the portraits, a large commission of ‘Richard Wilkins the Second, a prominent supporter of the Sunnydale Lodge.’ The picture hadn't survived the chaos too well and had a huge slash through it, but it was still easily recognizable. “Seems like old Wilkins is still causing us trouble from beyond his fiery grave.”

“How simultaneously logical and disappointing. Perhaps this was some form of fail-safe?” Giles had finally reached the forlorn display area, and was brushing debris away from some primitive looking markings fancifully drawn on the faux-ground. “Stasis runes, unless I miss my guess. The creatures were likely trapped here all this time.”

“Trapped like in jail? Rory doesn’t seem like the most aware kid in the class Giles, but I think even he would’ve noticed a Yeti pounding on the magic force field bars.” Buffy had an idea where this was going, but couldn’t resist taunting her Watcher a bit for old times’ sake.

“Nothing so banal,” Giles patiently explained. “When active, I believe these runes would have been keyed to all of them, paralyzing them completely and even stopping their metabolic processes. They would still be aware, but helpless to so much as wink an eyelid.”

“Majorly wiggy. So it’s not enough that a bunch of monsters got loose, they’re probably monsters that the Mayor decided to torture into insanity over a stretch of decades,” Buffy said.

“Quite,” Giles replied. “The runes don’t appear to be physically broken. I think it’s likely that they were either set to turn off automatically with his death, or were disrupted by it in some way and lost power as a result.”

Buffy started at the implications of that. “Do you think there are other fun little surprises like this he left scattered around?” She wasn’t too worried about handling a handful of monsters, even if the Yeti was as big as everyone said. But if this sort of thing was happening all over the place, it could be a total disaster. “I guess we can’t do anything about that now. Let’s go see if Xander was actually following a trail or just being a distraction.”

When they met Xander and his uncle again, it turned out that he’d learned a lot more than she’d expected. “OK, so I followed the trail to the creek, and it split up there. Something big, and maybe its dog or something, headed up the creek towards the town. Something that was even bigger went the other way, downriver. This eventually feeds into the Pacific, so if it keeps going it’ll end up at the beach.”

“Those soldier memories just keep paying dividends, huh Xander? I guess you usually get overshadowed by Oz as trail guy.” Buffy said. She wasn’t particularly concerned at this point with Rory being confused by the conversation, since they had all they needed from him, and he seemed to dismiss it as some kind of youth lingo anyway.

“Soldier memories. Yep. Paying dividends, that’s them,” Xander replied. Buffy thought he might be hiding something but didn’t want to press him on it. Maybe he’d been a boy scout? She would ask Willow sometime.

Anyways, they had to make a decision here. After sending Rory home, they needed to track these things down, but with only one real fighter among the three of them they couldn’t afford to split up. What would they go after first?


	4. S3.5E1: Victors IV

**[X] Head towards the town trying to find the Sasquatch and the Chupacabra. Giles seems to think they might be inclined to be meaner naturally, and they could kill lots of people in town. If the Scoobies don’t follow them now, they could be even harder to find later in all of Sunnydale’s nooks and crannies.**

“Apparently the Yeti at least might be friendly, and even if it isn’t the beach is going to have a lot less people on it than town, even on a day like this.” Buffy said. Of all the days for the streak of unseasonably cold weather to break, it had to be this one. It was the first day in a while Buffy hadn’t even wanted a jacket.

“I daresay you’re right, though the Watcher in me wishes we could see the Yeti. In good time though, I suppose.” Giles said. “If we drive alongside the creek towards town, we might be able to catch the other fiends up. They’re probably hours ahead of us at this point.”

“We might be able to spot it from the car if they leave the creek on this side, the Sasquatch wasn’t exactly covering its trail,” Xander said.

“I’m not sure about the direction you guys are going with all this,” Rory interjected. The three of them had stopped paying much attention to him a while ago. “Are you saying the other gang members escaped down the creek? Why would the Yeti’s friendliness matter? Isn’t it dead? And also not real?”

Buffy and Giles paused at this, grasping for a shallow lie or an easy diversion, but Xander just shook his head and said “Uncle Rory, your cryptids came to life and are rampaging around Sunnydale. We need to stop them before they kill a whole ton of people. Believe it or not, that’s just the way things are, and we need to jump in Giles’ Mystery Machine and do our Scooby thing.” Xander seemed to brighten up after that. Maybe it helped him to be able to get it off his chest for once. “Oh, and It would help a lot if you go find a picture of the diorama once we leave.”

Rory was a little stunned, but didn’t seem inclined to argue right now. “Ah, I can do that Xander, sure. I think I can maybe find something in the wreckage.”

“Look on the bright side!” Xander called as he walked away. “If we get you your monsters back, you might be the lucky one to stuff them this time!”

* * *

Unfortunately, the road was on the right side of the creek, and when it mattered most for Giles to be extremely English, he let them down by having an normal American left-drivered car. Xander was behind him trying to spot any disturbances in the flora (or disturbances in general) and Buffy was also in the backseat, reduced to leaning halfway over him trying to look for herself. She supposed she could add violating the seatbelt law to her list of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Meanwhile, Giles lectured at them as he drove, “The Chupacabra is a half-demon species similar to but much less common than the Vampire, at least in modernity. They are stronger and faster than the average Vampire, and they possess a short ranged bloodsense that makes them nightmarish to fight in melee. Unlike a Vampire, however, the Chupacabra keeps only the vestiges of a human intelligence and personality, and is mostly guided by the malicious spite and ferocious rage of its demon.

“Wait, like Vampires? You mean they come from people?” Buffy said.

“Do they do the whole I drink blood, you drink blood, everybody drinks blood thing?” Xander chipped in. “Do we have to worry about a Chupacabra epidemic?”

“You joke, but you’re actually very correct, at least about the former,” Giles replied. “While they do spread through ingested blood like their vampire cousins, the stronger connection of the Chupacabra to its demon requires the blood of multiple … donors to transform a human. With only one of them here, we should be spared that risk at least.”

“OK,” Buffy said. “So Chupacabra: strong, dumb, use ranged weapons. What about the Sasquatch?”

“Unlike the Chupacabra, Sasquatch are purely extradimensional in origin. While they have a similar appearance to their larger Yeti cousins, their temperament is much more violent. Their shaggy fur and thick hides make them extremely tough, and their stamina is endless,” Giles said.

“So like an Energizer Bunny, except big and mean and probably not pink.” Xander said.

Not bothering to acknowledge him this time, Giles continued, “Their senses leave a bit to be desired however, nearly blind and partially navigating by smell. Fighting a Sasquatch is a bit like fighting a bear.”

“You fought a Sasquatch before?” Buffy asked. Giles tended to be pretty reticent about his past, even now that his Ripper days were known to the group.

Giles sighed. “I still don’t know how Ethan managed to find the thing. The experience should prove useful, I hope, though I’m not quite as spry as I was in my younger days.”

In better circumstances, they might have badgered Giles for more of his story, but Buffy and Xander mutually decided to save it for another time. “I’m getting worried that we missed where they left the creek,” Xander said. “It’s been a while and there isn’t much farther left to go.” As they’d been driving, Sunnydale had slowly grown up around them, and what had once been a fairly wide channel had narrowed down to a smaller waterway flowing through a park area approaching downtown. The nice weather had a lot of Sunnydalers out and about, and there were even some kids throwing a football around with school recently closed (and exploded) for the summer.

As they were driving by, one of the kids noticed Xander leaning out the window and waved them down. Giles slowed to a stop, and Percy West ran up, along with some other familiar faces from the class of ‘99. “Are you guys looking for those monsters? There were two that ran by here just a few minutes ago, they left the creek going down main street.” He indicated the direction with his hand, towards the very center of the city. “We weren’t sure what their deal was and they seemed pretty focused on where they were going, so we gave them a wide berth.”

Xander fell back into his command role surprisingly smoothly, “Good job guys. You’re lifesavers, and not the edible kind.” He was about to continue, but Buffy had a realization and cut him off.

“They must be headed for City Hall!” She said. “The Mayor was the one that trapped them in the first place, and Giles, you said the Chupajawas were really spiteful? I bet they want revenge.”

“What are they going to do when they find out there’s no Mayor anymore to get revenge on?” Xander wondered.

“I imagine that if they reach their destination and don’t find him they’ll take it out on whoever is there,” Giles answered.

“I can’t think of an administration less deserving of being attacked by monsters,” Xander paused for effect, then finished. “Oh, wait, except all of them.”

Buffy shook her head. “Even if some of them were complicit in what Wilkins was doing, we can’t just let them be massacred. Let’s go.”

“Wait!” Percy said, as they were about to drive off again. “Me and the guys can help if you need us. We brought some machetes just in case.” He gestured to an innocuous looking duffel bag lying off to the side.

Giles was about to dismiss the idea out of hand, but Xander spoke up first, “Yeah, that would actually be helpful. Form up as a unit and follow behind us, but don’t break formation, and don’t engage unless you have to or unless you can support us in the flank.”

Percy nodded and they were about to run for their weapons, when Giles said “Wait.” Buffy expected him to argue, but he got out and ran around to the trunk. He handed Percy a crossbow with some bolts “For your best shot,” and then two cans of bear spray, “If you engage the Sasquatch, best use this first. Aim for the nose.” Percy took the offered weapons seriously, and Giles got back in and started driving.

They were vigilant for the last few blocks to City Hall, but there was no sign of their quarry’s passing except for a smashed mailbox and a couple dented cars. Most of the Sunnydale residents seemed to have taken whatever they’d seen in stride once it became clear it wasn’t going to directly affect their day. When they finally reached their destination though, the picture was grimmer.

The doors to the building had been knocked off their hinges, roars and screams emanated from within, and even as Giles skidded the car to a stop a vampire was thrown through a second story window and burst into ashes before he hit the ground. “There are still vampires here?” Xander asked. “Did anyone alive besides Allan Finch ever actually work here?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Buffy said. Sensing this was going to be a difficult battle, Buffy took Giles’ earlier words to heart and grabbed a bandolier of throwing knives out of the trunk. “Angel and I saw a ton of confused nobodies when we raided the place to steal the box.” Knowing time was of the essence, Buffy charged in while Giles and Xander were still equipping themselves to back her up.

Just as she entered, she was immediately fending off an attack from above. The Chupacabra had been waiting for her, and its limbs were a violent whirlwind as it danced through her reach. She took a few nasty slashes, finishing her outfit off for good, before catching it with a lifting kick that knocked it down the corridor. It wasn’t actually that big, maybe just a little bigger than her, but it wasn’t so easy to say that when it was trying to rip your face off.

As the fiend landed, she chucked a knife after it, but it recovered too quickly and dashed away, down another hall. “Hey! You’re not leaving until you pay for this top!” she shouted as she chased after it. She really didn’t know why she bothered to quip with nobody around that spoke English, but she supposed there might be some interns hiding in closets to appreciate her performance, at least.

She chased it through the building, throwing the odd knife at it but never connecting, and eventually it led her all the way to the third level. Eventually, she found herself in an intersection near the front side, when several things happened at once.

The Chupacabra was out of sight again, but now she thought it had stopped its mad dash. She could hear it bashing itself up against something that sounded solid just around the corner. Buffy remembered that the conference room she’d infiltrated through the skylight, and thought it might be over there. Just as she was about to go after the annoying thing again, she heard Xander’s voice echo up the nearby staircase with a “You’re not Buffy!”, followed by a thunderous bellow from below. Xander and Giles must have run into the Sasquatch!

Not to be outdone though, the local talent chose that moment to show up. A half dozen vampires in suits charged in from another direction, their leader shouting, “This will never be your town, Slayer!”


	5. S3.5E1: Victors V

**[X] Buffy ignores the vampires for now, and chases after the Chupacabra. It might be distracted trying to bash down the door, and this could be a chance to finally get a solid hit on it when it isn’t paying as much attention. Besides, if it’s trying to bash down the door, there might be people behind it.**

“I like to think of it as our town, really, but we can agree to disagree,” Buffy said as she turned away from the charging crowd of minions and went after the Chupacabra. Her superior speed gave her a temporary reprieve, but the outspoken vampire in the lead was hot on her tail. She solved that problem by slamming a fire door in his face after darting through it, ripping off the doorknob to give herself more time. She supposed she should thank Wilkins for being so circumspect about fire safety.

Carefully peeking around the corner, she saw the Chupacabra was still trying to break down the door to the conference room and hadn’t noticed her at all. Instead of following her instincts and charging in, she remembered its bloodsense, and quietly drew another knife and lined up her shot. It flew true this time, and jammed into the back of its neck, dropping it cold. She didn’t have much time to appreciate her victory however, as one of the chasing vampires had caught up and took advantage of her own distraction, tackling her from behind.

Buffy rolled with the fall and threw him off, but the rest quickly caught up and she was taking blows from all sides for a few difficult moments. Compared to her though, they were all weaklings in the end, really. She managed to pivot onto one hand and swept her legs in a circle, tripping three of them and scaring the others back. A stake was in her other hand and one was dust before he hit the ground. She used the momentum from her blow to transition into a cartwheel, nailing another one through the heart before he recovered from his fall, and then she was on her feet against the four remaining vampires, only mildly bruised and dusty for her troubles.

Two more tried to charge her at once then, but she had their measure now, sidestepping to the right and swatting one in the head hard enough to crash him into the other. “I’m surprised you guys didn’t work more on your coordination, I mean what else did you have to do in here all day? Filling out forms? Pressing suits?” Her latest move left one of the two still standing isolated in a corner and she finished him quickly. With their numbers cut in half, the remaining vampires had turned from confident to afraid. Suddenly though, hope blossomed in their leader’s yellowed eyes.

“You might have won this time, Slayer, but you haven’t seen the last of Digby Van Dyne!” Buffy was so stunned by a name even goofier than hers that the not-quite-dead Chupacabra took her completely by surprise.

The monster was on her again, a hurricane of claws and teeth twice as vicious as it had been earlier in the entryway. The knife she’d thrown was still sticking out the back of its neck, but it seemed to just be spurring the creature to greater feats rather than hampering it much. She took a bunch more small wounds, along with a more serious trio of cuts along her cheek.

Buffy decided she had had just about enough of this thing though, and took the opening it gave her with that last attack. She took hold of the knife already in its neck with her left hand, and then came across with another knife in her right, brutally scissoring its head off and spraying blood everywhere. As if that wasn’t enough, it completed its annoying existence by melting into a bloody slurry that she couldn’t really avoid getting all over her.

“Ugh. Giles couldn’t have mentioned that part?” Buffy belatedly noticed she was talking to herself, as the remaining vampires had fled the scene. Typical.

She quickly made her way down, but surprisingly, the Sasquatch was already dispatched, lying dead over the stairs. Percy’s irregulars had arrived, and the whole group combined with Xander and Giles had seemingly been enough. The whole area smelled like hot peppers and made her eyes itch, so she figured that the bear spray had played a significant role in the affair.

As she descended, she despaired for her blood-soaked appearance, but the looks it drew were more awed than derisive. She could really get used to this out-of-the-closet thing, on second thought.

“The good news is the Chupajawa is deader than Star Wars. The bad news is it’s all over my outfit.” Buffy gave Giles a meaningful glare.

Giles started for a second, and cleaned a bit of spray film off his glasses. “Ah, yes, perhaps I should’ve mentioned that bit. In any case, we were able to dispatch the Sasquatch with help from Percy and his allies, though I’m afraid it got some rather good blows in.” Now that Giles mentioned it, Buffy noticed Xander was favoring his right shoulder, and a couple of the ‘99ers were nursing similar wounds.

“I don’t suppose any of you saw any vampires skedaddling?” Buffy continued. “Some of Wilkins’ last followers are still lurking in the building apparently, but they turned tail when I was distracted by the crazy scaly monster.”

“Those cowardly vampires,” Xander interjected. “Kill a few of them and they start running away like kicked, fangy puppies.”

“Well, it is still daylight. They can’t have gotten out of the building easily,” Giles said.

A female voice answered him from above, “Actually, they probably used the basement sewer access. It’s safe to come down now, right?”

“I can confirm this Sasquatch is completely slain and spiced to order,” Xander said.

A thirty-something woman in a vintage dress appeared coming down the staircase. “It’s very reassuring you’re here,” she said to Buffy, apparently not discomfited by her macabre appearance. “Digby’s been pretty unstable since he came back with what was left of the thugs yesterday, I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t just kill us all out of spite.”

“Ah, thanks?” Buffy was getting the sense she was missing something again. “You seem to know me, but I don’t think I know you?”

“Oh, of course, I’m Cynthia Danvers, your office manager.” Her introduction managed to raise more questions than it answered, but before anyone could ask them she continued her spiel. “I make sure everything runs smoothly inside City Hall, buying necessary supplies, handling payroll and so on. Mayor Wilkins also liked to have me make sure everything was kept very clean.” She looked at the bloody scene with a fair bit of exasperation, though not any fear. “There’s a full bath upstairs, and I can even get you a change of clothes if you like. I think there’s something appropriate in your size?”

Buffy gave everyone else present a look that said she would be happy if they took the lead, but nobody was taking. “I didn’t know I even had an office.”

At that, Cynthia finally appeared worried. “You came to take over everything, right? With you, err, defeating Mayor Wilkins in such a dramatic manner, we all sort of assumed you were taking control of the city? Even Digby was obsessing about it, and he was convinced he could take the city over.” She started to approach Buffy, and then looked at her blood-soaked attire again and seemed to think twice about it. “There’s so much to do. Everything’s already in chaos with the transition, and without a strong leader to take his place anything could happen!”

As Cynthia’s voice was rising in fear, two others appeared from above, following her somewhat more cautiously. Xander tried to break up the rising tension, “And who might you two be?”

One was middle aged, professional looking, and balding. “Ian Banks, I’m the Registrar of Deeds.”

“Vanessa Waters, City Councillor.” The other was an spry older woman in a cardigan. “The only one left at this point, from what I can tell.”

Cynthia continued, “The recent months have had some attrition, and after the battle yesterday many more of the people who work here seemed to flee the city. We survived the latest attack barricaded in the conference room, and I think there are probably several others scattered around the building, but we really need help. The sorts of people Mayor Wilkins dealt with to run the town won’t respect us, the police aren’t listening to us anymore, and on top of all that we’re so understrength now that each of us is doing three jobs worth of work or so.”

Giles had been looking increasingly concerned throughout the speech, and finally spoke up, “Those are all very reasonable concerns, but Ms. Summers is the Slayer, not some kind of civil servant or town strongman. There must be some kind of legal means to address the situation.”

“Not really,” Vanessa cut in. “Things in this town have always been extremely unofficial, and baby smooth. Was that way ever since Richard the First was Mayor when I was a gal. This town hasn’t ever even had to have a special election, I don’t have a clue how it would even go. Besides all that, Cynthia’s right. This town doesn’t know how to work without a strongman, or strongwoman, as the case may be. If Ms. Summers isn’t it, there might not be a town anymore come the end of Summer.”

Buffy wasn’t sure. They really seemed to need her help, but would she actually be able to mayor a whole town? She was only eighteen, she would probably just mess it up and make things worse. “I don’t really know anything about mayoring. I got a C- in civics.”

Xander shook his head, more resolved than she was. “It might not be the result you got at the career fair, Buff, but it kind of makes sense? You’ve been working hard to save the town since you’ve got here, this would just sort of be in a more official capacity. And with someone on the good side calling the shots, maybe we could clean up Sunnydale for real.”

“And in Sunnydale, what does what we learned in school really matter?” Percy said, truly arguing from the heart. “People like you, and people are afraid of you. That’s what this Wilkins guy seemed to be all about anyway.”

Buffy grinned a little in response to their warm words (or at least, words intended to be warm) “There’s really no one else though? Isn’t there some kind of something that’s supposed to take care of situations like this?”

“Well, I’m sure if worst came to worst, the Watcher’s Council would be happy to step in and take political control of the Hellmouth.” Buffy and Xander both grimaced as Giles said that, but he held up his hands in defense. “I’m not saying I think it’s a good idea. The last thing Quentin Travers needs is more power.”

Buffy felt sick as she thought about what the Council getting more deeply involved in Sunnydale affairs would mean. If she didn’t want that to be the only solution, it looked like she would have to be a big girl and step up. “Well, we can’t let Sunnydale totally go to the wolves, and bringing in the Council would be even worse. I guess I can help you. And Xander’s right, we might actually be able to improve things this way.”

All three of the civil servants relaxed a lot at that declaration. “We can help work you into it too,” Cynthia said encouragingly. “There are a lot of things you won’t have to handle personally if you don’t want to, but without your face on the operation it would’ve been doomed from the start.”

Buffy nodded. Then, looking to Giles, she asked, “What do you think we should deal with first? Sunnydale's a pretty fraught place already, and it seems like everything’s gotten even fraughtier in the past day.”

“Well,” Xander spoke up. “Maybe we should deal with the Yeti possibly rampaging across the public beach? Just a suggestion.”

“Oh dear.” Giles said.

“The Yeti!” Buffy exclaimed.

“The Yeti?” Everyone else wondered.

* * *

“How do you lose a Yeti?” Willow asked.

The sun was starting to set and the beach was fairly quiet. Giles had driven Buffy and Xander out, and Cynthia had even brought Percy and his friends in her minivan. The magic of cellphones had managed to finally summon Willow and Oz as well, but everyone was pretty embarrassed when they arrived at the beach and there was no Yeti to be found. Percy’s contingent hadn’t minded the detour at least, and were now throwing the football around over the dunes a little ways away.

“The Yeti was here.” Oz said definitively. “The trail kind of ends in the ocean.” That part was less definitive. A particularly big wave lapped up to their feet. The tide was coming in.

Giles had been asking some questions. Buffy would’ve helped, but she was still covered in blood, so accosting random people might not have been a great idea. “Somehow it didn’t cause much of a stir. Some of the children noticed it, but most of the adults seem to think they were just getting excited about a beached whale.”

“Maybe it went out to sea?” Willow wondered. “Do Yetis do that?” She put up her hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she tried to get a good view out over the ocean. If there were any Yetis out there, Buffy couldn’t see them.

“There are a number of cases of Yetis just sort of … disappearing in the literature.” Giles said. "Usually it happens in much less populated areas though."

“It could have just been Sunnydale Syndrome.” Xander didn’t really sound like he believed it. “I mean, it was just a giant Yeti. Easy for people to ignore.”

“Well, this is probably good right? The Yeti isn’t raging, and it just decided to leave, so one less big problem to deal with.” Everyone looked at Buffy. “OK, I admit it, this is totally going to suck.”


	6. S3.5E2: Spoils I

**Previously, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:**

_INT. BUFFY'S HOUSE - JOYCE'S BEDROOM - NIGHT_

_JOYCE: It's from Nigeria. We got a very exciting shipment at the gallery. I thought I'd hang a few pieces in here. It cheers up the room._

_INT. JOYCE'S BEDROOM - NIGHT_

_PUSH IN ON THE MASK ITSELF_

_As the EYES START TO GLOW._

_INT. GILES' CAR - NIGHT_

_Desperate to get to Buffy's, Giles SPEEDS down the street._

_GILES: Unbelievable... (as Joyce) "Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead!" (himself) Americans..._

* * *

_INT. GILES' PLACE - LATER (NIGHT)_

_CREAM PLAYS. Giles' button-down is open, revealing a white t-shirt-style undershirt. He lies on his back by his record player amid scattered albums. Joyce is mixing a Kahlua and Pepsi. Cigarettes smolder in an ashtray on the floor._

_JOYCE: So, you wanna watch TV, Ripper? I know how to order pay-per-view._

_GILES: Let's go out. Have some fun. Tear things up._

* * *

_INT. TOWER - DAY_

_JONATHAN: What are you talking about?_

_BUFFY: Actions having consequences, stuff like that --_

_JONATHAN: I wouldn't ever hurt anybody. I came up here to kill **myself**._

* * *

_INT. BRONZE - NIGHT_

_This is the worst of all. Her usual vamp headquarters is filled with living humans, and the pulse pounding beat has been replaced by the mellow song stylings of K's Choice._

_Vampwill wanders about, looking for the master, or some sign of sanity. Instead, she bumps into:_

_PERCY: Hey!_

_She looks at him, no idea who he is._

_PERCY: Rosenberg? What are you doing? Trick-or-treating?_

_She looks him over, amazed at his audacity._

_PERCY: You're supposed to be at home doing my history report. I flunk that class you're gonna be in big trouble with Snyder. Till we graduate, I OWN your ass._

_VAMPWILL: Bored now._

_She rockets the heel of her hand into his chest. He flies backwards over the pool table, landing just about as painfully as he can._

* * *

_EXT. FOUNTAIN QUAD - NIGHT_

_ANGLE: THE LOWER LEVEL_

_Angel is just kicking ass. The vamps are torn -- finally one calls out:_

_VAMP: Get the kids!_

_And heads up the steps. The others follow -- and are met by a wave of students, the entire graduating class pouring down on them, yelling, weapons in hand, they meet on the stairs and fuggin Braveheart ensues._

_Amidst the carnage, we see our kids: Willow, Oz, Cordelia, all engaging. Jonathan also managing to hold his own._

_We see Harmony as a vamp pulls her aside and bites the shit out of her._

* * *

_INT. CITY HALL - STAIRS - DAY_

_XANDER: It might not be the result you got at the career fair, Buff, but it kind of makes sense? You’ve been working hard to save the town since you’ve got here, this would just sort of be in a more official capacity. And with someone on the good side calling the shots, maybe we could clean up Sunnydale for real._

_PERCY: And in Sunnydale, what does what we learned in school really matter? People like you, and people are afraid of you. That’s what this Wilkins guy seemed to be all about anyway._

* * *

**S3.5E2: Spoils**

“Well I for one think you’re going to be an excellent mayor, Buffy. And just think of how good it’ll look on your resume!” Buffy wasn’t sure that she’d be a good mayor at all, and if she wasn’t, being mayor of a town overrun by demons probably wasn’t the kind of thing she’d want to bring up in a job interview.

Joyce had gone through serious whiplash when Buffy had arrived home late and covered in blood. First, she’d been thrilled Buffy was alive. Then, she’d been annoyed that Buffy had gotten into another deadly situation, just a day after her supposedly big encounter at graduation. Finally, the story about the dastardly Mayor Wilkins, the explosion of Sunnydale High, and a Slayer-sized power vacuum at City Hall had broken her a bit. There had been the predictable alcohol binge that night, but her mother had been surprisingly chipper in the morning, eager to poke into this new part of Buffy’s life in all sorts of stressful mom ways.

Originally, Buffy had been going to meet the whole gang at City Hall today to hash out what to do with their sudden windfall of one slightly used city. She was still going to do that, but she hadn’t expected her mom to be driving her there. She was kind of worried that she would somehow ruin everything, though everything was already pretty ruined, so maybe she couldn’t do much harm.

Joyce went on with her optimistic ranting, oblivious to Buffy’s internal conflicts, “I mean, think of all the good we could do for this town! We could improve the schools, further the arts, and maybe even raise property values.”

“I’m pretty sure the kind of good I’m going to be doing is more with the sword than the pen.” Buffy said. “Though improving the schools won’t be too hard. Sunnydale High has a smoking crater in it now, and that’s already an improvement over how it was last week.”

Joyce sighed, but not even Buffy’s snarking could ruin her good mood. “Well, I’m sure you have the sword angle handled, but at your age it’s always good to expand your horizons, and this could be a great opportunity. Besides, aren’t all your friends coming to help with things? They’re a pretty smart crowd.”

“They’re lifesavers. But they all have their own stuff to do too. Willow’s mom has totally been on the warpath about her orientation for construct-a-major at UC Sunnydale, she wasn’t really happy that she didn’t go to a better school.” Buffy said. “Xander’s going to go on his road trip at some point, though he’s going to have to wait until his sprained shoulder is better. He said he can’t really use the clutch in his car that well right now. And Giles … I’m not actually sure what he’s doing, but he’s probably really busy. And look! Here we are!” Buffy jumped out of the car, eager to escape the awkward conversation.

Buffy walked up to the already repaired doors of City Hall and entered, only to meet Giles on the other side, waiting around and seemingly not doing much of anything. “Buffy, why there you are! I wanted to talk to you before the meeting.” Joyce strolled in after her, and Giles started for a second before continuing, “Ah, Ms. Summers. I didn’t expect you would be joining us.” He cleaned his glasses worriedly.

Joyce smiled a little like a cat. Buffy was more disturbed by it than Wilkins’ transformation into a giant snake. “Why wouldn’t you? Buffy is only eighteen, and being mayor is a big responsibility. It’s only natural that I would come along to help her get started.”

“Quite,” Giles replied, still a little discombobulated. Buffy hoped this wasn’t a sex thing. “Well, in any case, what I was going to discuss involves you as well. Over our three years guarding the Hellmouth, there have been numerous incidents involving dangerous artifacts being imported to Sunnydale’s museums and galleries. Ampata, Acathla, even Ovu Mobani.” Joyce cringed a little at that reminder. “While I would of course help you with the transition in general, and continue to work with you on training as usual, I’d been thinking I could take an official oversight role to prevent issues like this in the future.”

Buffy was surprised Giles had so much time, but it did seem like a good idea. She was about to agree, but her mother spoke up first, “I could help you with that. I have connections with some of the other galleries in town already, and I even rotated some stock with the Historical Museum last year.”

“Ah,” Giles delayed, trying to think of a response. “While your help would be appreciated, there is quite a lot of specialized knowledge involved in proper identification-”

“Oh, I know I couldn’t replace you, but the general pattern actually seems pretty clear? If it looks like a dangerous artifact and quacks like a dangerous artifact it probably is one. I mean, had I known to be on lookout for that kind of thing I would’ve mentioned something about the mask. I always thought it was kind of creepy. I could just filter through things and send anything that looked suspicious to you for identification.”

“Well,” Giles said, “It would save a lot of time. I imagine that this summer won’t be as calm as some of the recent ones have been, what with Buffy’s new position.” He seemed a little disappointed, and Buffy herself was a little worried, but Joyce had a point. Most of those evil things had looked pretty evil from the get-go. Really, what could go wrong?

* * *

“I believe everyone is here, so we can now call the first meeting of the Summers administration to order.” Cynthia said. Buffy privately thought things had grown a little out of control, but there really wasn’t anything she could do about it. This was just how mayoring went, she guessed.

The whole remaining Scooby gang had shown up, including herself, Xander, Willow, and Oz, all in a knot at one end of the table. For his part, Giles was sitting with her mom, who had also invited herself to the meeting. Cynthia had organized everything, and her companions from yesterday, Vanessa and Ian, were sitting on either side of her. Maybe most surprisingly, Jonathan and Percy were there too. She wasn’t sure who had actually invited them, but it made more sense for them to be here than her mother, at least.

Everyone was quiet, so Buffy figured she was supposed to speak up first. “Thanks everyone for coming.” She paused awkwardly, not totally sure what they were supposed to accomplish, but pushed on, risking a vague direction, “So this meeting is about figuring out what we’re all going to do. With Sunnydale I mean.” Scooby meetings had always had much clearer goals, and also weren’t held in nice conference rooms. The skylight in the roof sort of reminded her of the library though.

Jonathan somehow interpreted her cue as something more meaningful than she had imagined. “I’ve spread the word to all the ‘99ers that we’ve taken over the city, and that we need people to help run it. The response has been pretty positive, at least short term, since most people weren’t really doing anything this summer.”

“So we’ll be able to staff the hotline and the watch network?” Xander said. He was wearing a sling on his right arm, and Buffy momentarily regretted that she hadn’t given him more help yesterday. There’d been nobody else to fight all the threats upstairs though, so there wasn’t really anything she could’ve done.

“I got that,” Percy said. “Never could trust the cops around here anyway.”

“They’ve never been a very inspiring police force,” Vanessa said. “Though they’re usually more reliable for at least pretending to do their jobs. They were afraid of Richard, and without him around they may be a little difficult to control.”

Buffy didn’t like the sound of that. “Wait, aren’t we like, City Hall? Don’t they have to listen or get fired, or something?”

Ian shrugged his shoulders. “Legally, the situation’s complicated. The police have ruled that Mayor Wilkins is officially “missing”, and for the next few days that means you’re debatably only the acting mayor de facto, and not de jure, even under Mrs. Waters’ authority as the city council.” He paused, fearfully expecting a bad reaction, but when Buffy didn’t bite off his head or anything he went on, “For as long as that lasts, nobody can really tell them what to do. Of course, you could just go down there and tell them what to do anyway, if that’s how you wanted to handle it.”

Visions of her arrest-adjacent activities over the past year flashed through Buffy’s mind, and she shook her head. “I think I’d prefer the actual force of law for confronting the cops.”

“They’re probably too incompetent to do much damage anyway.” Xander said.

“Even outside of safety measures like that, we have other immediate needs,” Cynthia said. “We’ve started an effort to pin down some of the late mayor’s hidden assets. The city has some of its own funds, and a number of artifacts on the premises have been made available to Mr. Giles and Ms. Rosenberg already, but it’s believed that he had large reserves on hand outside of that which we haven’t about to locate.”

“I’ve got some ideas about that,” Ian said. “It’ll take more manpower to look through all the paperwork and do all the footwork for them to lead anywhere, he hedged.”

“Well, it’s a good thing we’ve got a whole graduating class of up and coming do somethings then.” Willow said. “A lot of the stuff we already found is pretty intense with the magic too. I had a look at Circe's Fourth Codex and it was pretty mind blowing.” Giles’ expression looked a little worried at that, but Willow quickly reassured him, “Safe mind blowing! With no actual exploded brains, and lots of productivity and caution!”

“Magical items aside,” Cynthia continued, “The real decision we must make first is about money. The fact is that Sunnydale has historically operated at a rather distressing loss. We haven’t had a quarter in the black since 1926, actually. Traditionally, the presiding Wilkins has cut checks from his own money to make up our losses, allowing rather profligate spending considering our anemic tax base.”

“Wait, so you’re telling me that we control the whole town, and we’re still broke? This is like one of those nightmares where you’re a sports star but suddenly you realize you’re on the field in your underpants.” Xander said. Willow raised her eyebrow at him a bit. “A little too much information?” he asked.

Having learned to mostly ignore Xander already, Cynthia went on, “It’s possible that our efforts will bear fruit, and these concerns are for naught. We could also find new income sources eventually, ones which Richard traditionally dealt with privately and aren’t obvious on our books. But we could also fail to do either, and if so, we will run out of money in months if we keep spending at traditional rates. Should we press on, or batten the hatches for winter?”


	7. S3.5E2: Spoils II

**[7/14] Spend Money. Buffy’s confident they can make the town pay for itself soon enough.**

**[7/14] Save Money. Buffy isn’t sure they’ll have as easy a time financing things as Wilkins did.**

A pause fell over the meeting at Cynthia’s blunt statement, but eventually Giles was the first to speak. “While the late mayor may have been very successful in his fundraising efforts, I’m sure that emulating him isn’t going to lead us anywhere good. We witnessed the unsavory prices of some of the deals he made firsthand last year, and I daresay that those are just the sort of things we’re trying to stop.”

“Hey! Maybe less slippery slopes and more calm logical reasoning?” Willow said, a little annoyed. “Just because the old mayor was evil and made a whole ton of dirty money doesn’t mean that a healthy economy is bad. There are probably all sorts of perfectly good ways we could increase tax dollars. Just think of all we could discover with some money for actual research!”

“Hey, let’s not get too bent out of shape out of this,” Xander said, making a conciliatory gesture at Willow. “I think Giles has some good points. We could go in with every intention of taking the high road, but when the credit card bills start piling up at the end of the month moral fiber has a way of eroding away.”

“That’s true, but what applies to an individual doesn’t apply the same way to a government,” Ian tried to explain. “A lot of the time you have to spend money to make money. For example, without more people to help it’s going to be a lot harder to find Wilkins’ hidden stores.”

“And you can’t expect people to work for nothing!” Joyce cut in. “Duty’s well and good, but I’ve been trying to tell Buffy all this time that it won’t put food on the table or money in your 401k. All you kids are practically saints for doing all you’ve done already, but if you want a lot more people to help you run a town you’re going to have to pay them something for their time, not to mention the risks to their safety.”

“The city does have some more traditional assets.” Vanessa said. “There’s a lot of real estate it holds, we could get to work on selling some of that if we wanted to be fiscally responsible while still having money for expenses.”

“I’m not sure that’s a very good idea.” Cynthia had a pinched expression on her face. “With Ms. Summers’ spectacular efforts making our city safer in the past few years, and the booming market nationwide, real estate looks like a very good long term investment in Sunnydale right now. In the short term though, the destruction at the high school and the political instability in the city is going to make it a buyer’s market. This is an awful time to sell.”

“Are a couple percents over a few years really going to matter?” Xander was starting to look a little annoyed as well, despite his efforts at peacemaking earlier. “If the city really needs the money now, maybe we need to focus on the next few months before we worry about the next few years.”

“As much as I hate to admit it Xander, I agree that a mass sell off of property now is a bad idea.” Giles cleaned his glasses frustratedly. “With the mayor recently dead, all sorts of nefarious elements are going to be looking to set up shop on the Hellmouth and carve out a piece for themselves. Flooding the market with cheap property is just going to attract more sharks to the scent of blood.”

Buffy was getting tired of this herself, but she decided there were some things she was already convinced of. Xander was about to reply, and it looked like Joyce and Willow had more to add too, but Buffy just cut them all off to speak her piece. “Look everyone, I think we have to just be reasonable about all this. We don’t need to spend like Wilkins did; this was never about a fat payday or shiny toys. We don’t need to make any rash decisions about selling things or buying things either. What we do need to do though, is actually pay people.” Buffy sighed, as what she was about to say wasn’t easy.

“My mom’s right. It’s not fair to ask good people to sign up with us to build a better Sunnydale and give them nothing in return, depending on their guilt to make them help us. That’s how the Watchers' Council operates, and the last thing I want is to be like them. We can cut some corners elsewhere to give ourselves more time to stabilize, I guess.”

Her friends were quiet at that, and Cynthia nodded, as if now that Buffy had spoken, the meat of the matter was decided. Buffy wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “Well then, everyone, let’s discuss just what sorts of corners we’re going to cut.” She opened a thick folder in front of her, and ominous packets of paper were passed around the room.

Buffy grimaced. She’d graduated two days ago, and already it was like she was back in school.

* * *

“Wait, have you even graduated yet?” Xander asked.

“Technically I’m a junior now. But I’m totally qualified to help protect the town! I already have lots of useful skills.” Buffy surreptitiously checked her notes, something Xander apparently hadn’t bothered with. This was Andrew Wells, age 16. Buffy wondered if he had anything to do with Tucker.

After the bureaucratic nightmare that was yesterday’s budget discussion, Buffy had almost been looking forward to doing interviews with Xander. Either of them could’ve maybe done them on their own, but Xander had spent more time working with the ‘99ers in the lead up to graduation, while Buffy felt that if she didn’t start getting to know the people working for her now she might never have the chance, with all the disasters that kept happening. Xander was also going to be slay-adjacent at least until his shoulder finished healing, so it gave them a chance to hang out.

“And those useful skills are?” Xander asked.

“Well, I’ve mastered D&D 2nd edition, I’ve memorized the entire script of the Star Wars trilogy, and I have lots of experience in summoning and controlling demons!” Andrew proudly declared.

“Wait, what?” Buffy said. “You realize we’re the good guys right? Demon summoning bad. That’s the sort of reference you could’ve used to get a job here last month.”

“What demons have you even summoned anyway?” Xander said.

“Don’t you remember that fateful performance of Romeo and Juliet in the spring of 1998? With the flying monkeys?” Andrew said, “Everyone was like: ‘Run Juliet!’” He changed his voice a bit and raised it, waving his hands and trying to pantomime a crowd.

“Oh.” Xander said. “OK, I have to admit, that was kind of funny.”

“Hey!” Buffy turned to Xander, “Whose team are we on here? And I don’t remember any monkeys. Flying monkeys seems like the kind of thing I would remember.”

“It happened one of the days you were sick with the flu,” Xander explained. “With everything going on I guess nobody ever told you about it. They didn’t really do any harm, they just flew around and screeched at people for a few minutes. Snyder had to hide under the stage. I didn’t even know they were demons, actually.”

Buffy almost said something about not speaking ill of the dead, but she couldn’t quite muster up any sort of protective emotion for Principal Snyder, even under the circumstances, so she let it pass. “But, like, still,” She struggled to get control back of the conversation, and perhaps of her of her life general. “You’re a nerd who summons demons.”

“Exactly!” Andrew cut in, before Buffy could form a more coherent thought. “I have tons of knowledge of the occult already, which a lot of my older compatriots are going to lack. And I’m great at categorizing and memorizing information. If demon summoning is off the agenda I can still totally be useful. And it really shouldn’t be, even if we’re fighting on the side of good. Unlike in D&D, real demons have a broad range of alignments. Those monkeys were chaotic neutral at worst.”

Now that Buffy thought about it, a lot of the regular denizens at Willy’s didn’t seem too bad. Maybe Andrew knew a thing or two after all. And even if he didn’t, it was probably better to keep the kid where she could see him. “Fine. I guess you’re on as a provisional hire, Willow or Giles can probably do something useful with you.”

* * *

“It’s not that I don’t want you to be here Anya, it’s just that I’m a little surprised.” Unlike in some of the recent interviews, Buffy did have a very good idea who this person was, but thought it would be best to let Xander lead the discussion, all the same.

“Why is it surprising? Do you not think I can do the job? I mean I’m older than your entire administration put together. I’ve seen nations rise, and made nations fall. You should be the ones begging me to work for you!” Anya definitely had a way of seeing things. Buffy wasn’t sure if it was a good way, but it was a way.

“The last time we talked, you weren’t sticking around for the fall. If I remember correctly, you didn’t even want to be on the same planet. And yet, not a week later, here you are, back in Sunnydale and acting as if you were always part of the team!” Xander definitely seemed a little sore about how things had left off with Anya. She hadn’t been to much of the prom, maybe they’d had a really bad date?

“I was! Don’t forget that without me, you wouldn’t have even known what the mayor was going to turn into! Which means no surprise bombing and the entire city eaten.” Anya waved her hands out in front of her as if to reenact the explosion she hadn’t been here for. Maybe there was something about interviews that made people want to gesticulate? “I mean, I practically was the one who saved the whole town!”

“Oh, now she’s the one who saved the whole town. Maybe Anya should be mayor!” Xander said sarcastically.

“I was actually elected mayor of the village of Szob in 1627, after I’d cursed the previous mayor to have his digestive system eaten by bot flies. He wasn’t only a notorious lecher and a corrupt fraud, but he also snored. I never took office, but the people really loved me there.” Buffy had the sense that Anya might’ve done well to apply a month earlier too. There was a lot of that going around.

“Look Anya, I’ve heard so many stories of disgust and woe and more disgust from you that I’m not even shocked by that one. How are we supposed to hire you when you’re just one restored power center away from going vengeance-y all over again?” Xander asked.

“Do people spontaneously start selling fast food in the street after they get fired by the local Doublemeat Palace? D’Hoffryn hired me to be a vengeance demon, and I was a good vengeance demon. Now I’m effectively fired. If you hire me to be your advisor, and I’m half as good at that as I was at being a vengeance demon, won’t it be worth it?” Anya and Xander’s voices had slowly been raising this whole time, and now they were practically shouting at each other. Buffy decided she’d better act fast before they started making out in her office or something. She was happy that Xander had found someone, but she didn’t need to see that.

“Yes. It would be. You’re hired,” she said.

“What?” Xander and Anya asked, both confused.

* * *

“Was that the last one?” Buffy asked the phone.

“You have one more,” Cynthia replied in a tinny voice. She sounded a little more hesitant than usual. “She’s something of a special case, but she asked me very sincerely to let you hear her out, and I thought it should be your decision.” After some of the decisions Buffy had had to make in the past few days, she was waiting longingly for uncomplicated slaying tonight. But she would have to wait just a little longer. “Alright then. Let’s see what she’s got.”

After a minute, the door opened, and Harmony Kendall walked in. Buffy was momentarily very confused, but Xander had kept better track of everyone and didn’t hesitate. “Harmony! You’re dead!”

“Guilty,” she said glumly. “But not like, you know, guilty. I haven’t done anything bad yet!” She whined, fanging out.

Buffy quickly vaulted the desk, both to prevent Harmony from getting away and to protect Xander from further injury. “Harmony, I know you weren’t always very good in school, and Xander might not have had too much time to go over this, but Vampires? Evil. They go around eating people. I slay them. It’s this whole big thing.”

“I know, I know!” Despite being in game face, Harmony wasn’t making aggressive moves, she was just continuing to whine. “I haven’t eaten anybody yet and I’m really hungry! But the first thing I did after I woke up from my coffin was get the gossip from Aura and she told me the whole deal. You’re mayor now and you’re recruiting everyone. I want to stay on the winning team.” She cringed away, like a puppy expecting to be kicked.

That was actually a surprising amount of sense coming out of a fledgling. But it still could never work. “Harmony, you aren’t even really Harmony anymore. You don’t have a soul. The first time you get a chance you’re just going to eat someone anyway.” Buffy pulled out a stake. It felt a little bad to kill her when she wouldn’t even fight, but she could at least make it quick.

“But I know I couldn’t! You’d just find out eventually, I know I’m too stupid to be able to cover it up. And then I’d be dead. And whether I’m Harmony or not, I think I’m Harmony and I don’t want to die. How is it my fault I don’t have a soul?” As arguments went to not be staked, it wasn’t great, but it was actually better than most that Buffy had heard.

Xander wasn’t convinced though, “Buffy, you can’t seriously be humoring her? Just make with the stakey and then we can mosey. You even have office workers now to clean up the dust.”

Harmony managed to push her game face back down and fell to her knees. “Please! I saw that other vampire fighting on your side! Maybe I could be like him?”

“Deadboy’s not exactly the best role model for good behavior. And even if Willow could curse her with a soul, this isn’t angsty Angel, this is vapid Harmony. She probably experiences a moment of true happiness whenever she gets a new My Little Pony.” Xander seemed convinced, but Buffy was uncertain.

Maybe it was the cavalcade of questionable characters she’d already allowed into the ranks. Maybe it was the pathetic sight of the vampire on her knees, begging and bawling for her life. Maybe somewhere deep down inside, Buffy didn’t think it was fair either. But Xander was right, there were no guarantees, especially with probably totally ill-fitting magic, and Harmony might turn on a dime the first chance she got.


	8. S3.5E2: Spoils III

**[X] Buffy decides that they can probably work something out, somehow, and locks Harmony up with some butcher’s blood. The gang will try to figure out how reliable she is and what she needs to keep her under control.**

“Urgh.” Buffy groaned. “I can’t do it.”

“Hurray!” Harmony cheered. She followed up with a raspberry up at Xander, still kneeling on the ground and sort of hiding behind Buffy’s legs. That Harmony felt the need to hide from an injured Xander Harris said a lot about how dangerous she was.

“Fine then, I can.” Xander awkwardly pulled a stake out of his pocket left-handed and marched around the desk. Harmony pivoted backwards and away, awkwardly landing on her butt.

“No.” Buffy made another pained noise. “Stop, I mean, what if she’s telling the truth?”

“We stake plenty of fledglings coming right out of the coffin,” Xander said. “And being our friend before he was turned didn’t make Jesse any less of a traitor. Harmony was barely even past being our enemy at the best of times!”

“It’s not my fault your friend was a jerk either!” Harmony retorted. “Though maybe he was justified, if this is how loyal you are. On Tuesday, you came right to me asking for help. Today, you want to stake me. Psycho much?”

“Harmony, you might be too dumb to understand, but that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.” Xander had abandoned his forward charge and just started monologuing. “You’re a demon, and you have Harmony’s face, her memories, and apparently her defective brain. But she’s dead. You’re the spawn of the thing that killed her. I’m not breaking fa-, anything with Harmony by killing you, I’m avenging her death.”

“Why are you calling me by her name then?” Harmony said. Buffy wasn’t sure the real Harmony was smart enough to pick up on that, and almost reconsidered her decision, before deciding that wasn’t really fair either. “Maybe the difference isn’t as clear cut as you think. Maybe the only part of that friend of yours that even liked you in the first place was his soul.”

Xander just resumed his charge after that with murder in his eyes, though what he expected to actually do once he reached Harmony was really anyone’s guess. Buffy had had enough of this though (she had been having enough of things way too much lately) and stopped him, stepping in front with a hand on his chest. “No. We don’t need to do this now.” She then turned around, picked Harmony back up into a standing position by her shoulder, and frogmarched her out of the office. A still irate Xander followed them out, silent for now but brooding up a storm.

“It’s time to go see Willow.” Buffy said with determination. “She can get Harmony back what passes for her soul and we can all stop arguing about this. If it goes flying away at the first sign of ponies, apparently Harmony’s terrified enough of me to come running right back anyway.” Buffy in fact had no idea if Willow would or even could restore Harmony’s soul, but it seemed like the kind of thing to say to make everyone be quiet until they got there.

Despite being the nominal mayor, Buffy did not in fact use the mayor’s old office. Willow had gone in there to mess with all his old stuff and sort of set up camp after they took over the building yesterday, and it had become her office by default. She didn’t really care though, especially because it would probably just remind her of Wilkins anyway. She didn’t even know how Willow could stand it herself, but then again the library at Sunnydale High hadn’t exactly been a place of happy memories either.

The three of them burst into the room, stumbling upon a scene nobody had expected. The room was darkened with lowered shades, and a ritual pentagram was represented in the middle of the floor with old bones and elaborate candles. Willow was pacing around it, throwing herbs and chanting in Latin, and sitting inside was the open habitrail of Amy the rat. Apparently Willow had taken the general directive to recruit ‘99ers to greater extremes than Buffy predicted.

Before any of them could interrupt, Andrew shushed them from the side, quickly scrambling to close the door to the room and herd them into a corner. Once they were contained away from the ritual, he whispered “Willow Rosenberg, powerful Wicca, looks to restore Amy Madison to the form of a fair maiden. It has been a harrowing day of exacting preparations for us, but we’re finally about to see the fruit of our endeavors.”

The office definitely looked pretty harrowed. A lot of the mayor’s magical possessions were scattered around the room, with his old desk covered in open books and random trinkets sitting in piles in the other corners. Buffy spied a fancy silver hourglass, an ornate spice rack of magical supplies, an elaborate model maze, and a clouded crystal ball among them. He’d definitely kept a lot of his old junk in here, that was for sure.

Just as Buffy was about to ask Andrew how much longer Willow’s fruit would take, her chanting grew in volume and changed to English. Apparently it was time for the show.

_“Banish Hecate from this place,_

_Her eyes to wander, Her focus slip._

_Banish Hecate from this time,_

_Her hands to release, her grip to slack._

_Beautiful Circe I implore,_

_Unbind the maiden, undo the spell._

_Beautiful Circe I request,_

_Banish Hecate, unwork her will!”_

There was a sense of heaviness in the air as Willow echoed her last line, and an iridescence seemed to shimmer around Amy’s rodent form. Before it could continue though, there was a sound of shattering glass and the energy exploded outwards, covering the room and blinding them all temporarily.

Buffy rubbed at her eyes, and as her vision cleared, the first thing she saw was Mayor Wilkins, smiling his evil smile in full human form again. In no mood for these shenanigans, she attacked immediately and tried to take his head off with a full power spin kick. Unfortunately, she went right through his flickering form, though she still managed to land on her feet behind it.

The Mayor took no notice of her attack, and taking another second to scan her surroundings, she saw she and her friends (and Harmony) were facing off with the apparition in a wooden corridor with an open roof. She didn’t have time to look more closely though, as Wilkins chose that moment to start one of his patented annoying lectures.

“Well now, whoever you are, you’ve been quite the busy bee. Trying to cast a big ol’ spell right in the middle of my own office, and without asking me for permission first!” Wilkins wagged his finger in the air at the group of confused people in front of him. “I have to admit, I’m amused by the gumption, and I guess in a way this is its reward, quite a marvel of engineering to witness if I do say so myself. My trap can sit passively without the slightest bit of magical radiation to alert mischief-makers like you, and then use your own spell’s energy to go off. I’d say it was a little bit of karmic justice, if I believed in karma.”

“You’ll wander around in my maze until I come back to deal with you. You have to admit, this was pretty naughty, and I figure this should give you some time to think about what you’ve done.” Wilkins’ face took a nastier cast after that, and his voice dropped from amused to murderous. “Don’t let your thoughts distract you too much though, or you might not survive that long.” With that, he winked out.

“How many dead people are going to insult me today?” Xander asked the room. Is my great aunt Priscilla going to show up next telling me how disappointed she is in my GPA?”

“We do it because it’s so fun, Xander.” Harmony’s little feud with him was apparently still going on, but they had bigger problems to deal with, apparently.

Willow ignored the byplay, analyzing the situation, “Darn it! I think he set it up to detect in the Astral plane. With it rooted in a separate object instead of the building in general I missed it when I scanned for wards. I feel so inept, I managed to lose to him even after we blew him up. Stupid taunty recording.”

Buffy felt like lashing out, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. “You couldn’t have known Will. It made sense to try to help Amy as soon as you could.” She made a face, “She’s been a rat for months now, I can only imagine what’s going through her head.”

“I think maybe this was a reverse summon?” Andrew speculated. “A dastardly maneuver, but to be sure-”

“Quiet dweeb. Does anyone else hear that?” Harmony asked. “Sounds like some kind of scratching.” Focusing more on listening to her new senses than anything else, she vamped out into game face again, spooking Willow and Andrew.

“Hey! Vampire! Did everyone else know Harmony was a vampire? You aren’t all vampires now, are you?” Willow backed towards the wall as she looked around, suspicious and worried.

“That would almost be a more sensible explanation,” Xander complained, “but no, apparently Harmony is a friendly vampire, and we’re all going to ignore common sense and just let her join the squad and eat people on the side.”

“Still haven’t eaten anyone!” Harmony shouted. “You’re really tempting me though.” She shook her head and went back to trying to listen.

Willow looked at Buffy, starting to sense the tense mood among her friends. “Does she have a soul or something? I know-”

“What is it with you people and souls? What are they even supposed to do?” Harmony sniped at Willow now, increasingly irritated. “I don’t have a soul, I just have common sense. You guys are clearly the winning team, I don’t want to be traded to the Cubs now.”

Willow wasn’t sure what to say to that, and Andrew was clearly out of his depth. Xander was about to pick up the argument again, but Buffy stopped him “I hear it too now. It’s like a metal scraping noise, but it’s far away, down there somewhere.” She pointed down the corridor, which ended in a slanted T junction about 50 feet away.

“Maybe we should go the other way then?” Andrew said. “For he that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.”

“Wilkins’ did say this place was dangerous,” Xander said. “But maybe we should deal with it now, instead of running around and letting it chase us forever? How long is it going to be before we can get out of here anyways?”

“Guess I should work on that. Harmony, give me a boost.” Buffy said. Harmony looked at her confused until Buffy mimed a cheerleading move, and then Harmony understood and clasped her hands together for Buffy. She jumped into her hands and was launched up towards the open roof of the maze, twenty feet up or so. When she got to the top though, she couldn’t grab over the wall; there was an invisible barrier her hands bounced off, and she would’ve tumbled back down if not for a quick push to readjust her course for a better landing.

“I wonder if I can still do cheerleading?” Harmony said, a little distracted by seeing her own strength for what might’ve been the first time.

Andrew was more concerned with the immediate situation. “We can’t escape a foul trap like this from the inside. If it’s a reverse summoning like I predicted, we’re all trapped miniaturized inside the enchanted model until someone opens it from the outside.”

“Wait, so we’re stuck tiny forever?” Buffy said. “I mean, I was short before, but this is ridiculous.”

“No, fearless leader. Once somebody opens it up, the spell will be broken utterly, and we’ll pop out back to where we were, full sized.” Andrew’s constant drama was yet another source of irritation, but at least he seemed to know what was going on. Or think he did.

“It could be hours before someone finds us in here,” Willow said.

“I don’t think it’ll be hours before scrapey metal noise finds us.” Buffy said. She looked around at everybody, sizing the situation up. Xander was still injured, Willow seemed a little worn out from her spell attempt earlier, and Andrew was a total noncombatant. On the other hand, Harmony was a vampire, even if she was kind of incompetent. She didn’t think it was a good idea to split the group up in a maze, but should they try to track down whatever monster was in here and fight it, or just keep away from it until help arrived?


	9. S3.5E2: Spoils IV

**[X] Buffy and her friends decide they should fight the unknown scraping monster. Buffy’s the slayer, she should be able to tip any battle.**

“We should probably at least take a look at whatever this thing is before we spend all night trying to play keep away with it in its own maze.” Buffy said. “It doesn’t sound particularly fast, anyway.”

“I still can’t even hear anything,” Andrew said.

“Slayers have better senses, Andrew.” Willow explained. She looked askance at Harmony, still a little weirded out. “Vampires too, I guess.”

Buffy and Harmony led them forward to the junction, and then left down the oblique path. The maze seemed featureless with its high wooden walls and narrow corridors, dim light shining down from above. Presumably it was from the candles, still burning in the Mayor’s office outside, though Buffy still wasn’t quite sure how this shrinking thing worked. Andrew had been babbling about summonings but she didn’t see how that made much sense.

They took a winding route through the maze, going past more junctions as well as corners and switchbacks, and finally the sound had gotten loud enough that everyone could hear. Buffy peeked around the corner and saw the creature, a huge metal thing marching down towards them. It took up most of the corridor, wielded a huge club in one hand, and had a wicked set of curved horns, making it clear what it was intended to represent. “Looks like it’s us vs. the robo-Minotaur,” Buffy reported. It hadn’t seemed to notice her, but it wasn’t like she could read its face.

“I guess Wilkins had a thing for the classics.” Willow commented.

“Well, he was old enough that he might’ve been around for them,” Xander said. Buffy indicated it was moving slowly enough that everyone could look, and when he saw it, he continued, “A big thing for the classics, by the looks of it.”

“Technically, it’s less than an inch tall.” Andrew said. “I wonder if he made it outside and then stuck it in, or if he made it to scale. The challenges of summoning an animating spirit to control a golem already inside a spatial pocket like this are actually-”

“Probably not relevant now.” Buffy cut him off. Even at its deliberate pace, they didn’t have much time before it reached them. “Will, I assume you’re pretty much out of gas? Any surprises up your sleeves for metal monsters?”

“I don’t even have any pencils to float.” Willow said. “Wilkins’ trap didn’t exactly bring my bag along for me.” Andrew handed her one and took another out from a pocket. He was already taking notes or something on a pad. Buffy figured he might end up turning into a mini-Watcher type, but at least he wasn’t Wesley. “Well, this’ll be great,” Willow continued, brandishing her booby prize. “Maybe I could put its eye out, if it had real eyes.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Buffy said, then turned to Harmony. “Looks like it’s a working interview then.” Buffy said. “You go across to the other side of this T and when it reaches the intersection we’ll flank it.”

“I have to be all alone over there? But you’re the slayer, shouldn’t you be the one fighting alone?” Harmony complained.

Buffy shooed her over with a push. “Harmony, they barely have one floating pencil between the three of them right now, and I don’t trust you enough for you to play defense with me on the other side of Wilkins’ toy model of doom. We don’t have time to argue, just do it.”

“OK, OK, chill out, boss.” Harmony got herself set on the other side, while Buffy contemplated the choices she’d made in life that led to vampire Harmony calling her ‘boss’.

She didn’t have much time to be distracted though, as the creaky construct finally arrived at the junction, turning her way and trying to swing its club right through her. Buffy dodged the ungainly weapon, but the machine was quicker than it looked, and the backswing slammed her right into one of the solid wooden walls.

Harmony was good to her word, but Buffy belatedly realized that she might really have had something to fear from Xander. She was sort of slapping at it from behind, and even though she was presumably doing it with vampire strength, her pathetic form left it unbothered. Suddenly though, it shifted and grabbed her around the stomach with its free hand, then threw her far forward to crash into the knot of retreating Scoobies. None of them seemed too hurt, but it let the Minotaur gain ground on them all as they got up.

As it moved forward, it ignored Buffy’s prone form, letting her take advantage. “Hey, what am I not good enough for you? I may work in an office now, but I still slay.” She didn’t bother to get to her feet, diving at it low and trying to trip it up. It was too solid for her to knock down, but she tangled up its legs and it stomped at her ineffectually as she rolled around it. She rolled to dodge another swing of its club, but that let it hit her with its bronze hoof and send her flying back across the intersection.

She was about to get back into the fray with it, but before she could it slammed its big club against the wooden floor, and the whole maze reacted. There was a clicking sound of clockwork in the walls, and then the junction flipped, a wall swinging around through ninety degrees and blocking Buffy off from the fight. Similar noises all around her let her know the whole maze had probably changed, she had no idea how to get back to her friends and save them from the Minotaur. Even worse, they were alone with Harmony; who knew what she might do now?

In frustration, she tried to punch her way through the wall, but only got a sore hand for her troubles, not even leaving a dent. “Stupid indestructible magic maze.” Normal wood would’ve totally been splinters if she hit it that hard.

With a groan of frustration, she quickly sprinted off in another direction, hoping she could navigate around somehow to get back to the fight. She knew her friends could outrun the slow-footed Minotaur for a while, but worried that it might use its trick again to catch them in a surprise dead end. It clearly hadn’t been after her either, so unless it was specifically looking to divide and conquer that meant one of the others was its primary target for some reason. Probably Willow, since she cast the spell that triggered it and this whole setup seemed automatic.

After some rushed navigation, she could hear grinding gears and the shouts of battle again and knew she was on the right track. She went down another couple corridors, and just as she thought she was getting close, the maze started shifting again. She wasn’t letting herself be cut off this time though, and dived forward just as the passage she needed closed off; she got through safely, but her left shoe was a casualty of war. Trust Wilkins to act all statesmanlike and affable but still be ruining her wardrobe from beyond the grave.

Rolling back into a run and kicking off her other shoe at the same time, Buffy rounded the last corner and saw the machine had indeed backed her friends up against the wall. They were doing a lot better than she expected though. Xander was up in its face despite his injury, mostly just being yanked around with its club arm but still a distraction, and Harmony was gamely attacking it, not showing great form but at least avoiding being grappled again.

Behind them, Willow had a couple pencils in the air now, and was shoving them into spaces right inside its joints to slow it down. It was able to grind right through them, but its movements were clumsier than before so the barrage might be having internal effects. Lastly, Andrew was not only a supplier of pencils, but seemed to think he was some kind of bard. He’d gotten a harmonica out from somewhere and was frantically playing an odd tune while looking at some of his notes.

Buffy didn’t have any more time to evaluate the situation, and attacked from behind with a heavy two handed blow. She’d learned it was tough enough to endure small hits and stable enough to avoid being knocked down, so she’d just have to beat it to death. It turned for her again, basically ignoring the feeble assaults of Xander and Harmony, but before it could fully engage, Andrew hit a sharp note and it froze in place for critical seconds. Buffy improvised, grabbing its own massive club out of its unmoving hand, and smashed it with a hefty overhand swing just as it started moving again.

It tried to fight her, but with its reach advantage lost her superior speed became a big factor. She hit it again and again, and unlike her earlier unarmed attacks these left visible damage, denting its metal armor and warping vulnerable joints out of alignment. It still took a while to finish it off, but minutes later its broken body finally stopped moving, and Buffy’s new club was barely in one piece anymore.

After a last look at her weapon, she threw it to the side and examined her friends for new injuries. They were scuffed up a bit, but didn’t seem much worse for wear, thankfully. “Well. That was a fun way to waste some time. How about we play Marco Polo next?”

* * *

Despite Buffy’s upbeat words, the group was pretty tuckered out after that. Andrew and Willow picked at the construct and occasionally exchanged jargony claims about it, while the rest of them just sat around in the fading candle-skylight. Harmony had ended up being more reliable than Buffy had guessed, and Andrew had been a good deal more competent. She kind of regretted shutting him down so hard during the fight, but he had persevered anyway and didn’t seem to hold or even register a grudge, so she figured it was all good.

Harmony and Xander were sitting across from each other now, sort of exchanging awkward looks. She wasn’t sure where that was going to end up, but she wagered that their next round of bickering would at least be a little less toxic. She still dreaded the upcoming talk about Harmony with Giles, but at least it wouldn’t be as much of a two-on-one anymore.

Eventually, just as the candles were more or less out and the maze had darkened past anyone but Harmony seeing that well, there was a distorted noise from above and everything brightened up a lot. Andrew started from his nap against the wall, Harmony squinted and vamped out again, and Xander said “And it’s the cavalry in good form, hours too late.”

Willow tried screaming for help, and surprisingly after a little bit a giant Giles appeared up in the air above the maze. Buffy figured that either sound must echo out of it really well or the Mayor had built in speakers for his sadist enjoyment. The ground shook momentarily as he seemed to mess with the mechanism, and then with a click there was a rush of wind and another flash, fading away with everyone appearing full size again back in the office.

Giles wasn’t the only one to receive them; Joyce standing there looking shocked too. Before either of them could get a word in though, Willow made with the explanations. “We were de-ratting Amy which I really thoroughly researched and performed extra-safely with a capable spotter, but the Mayor left a really clever totally unpredictable booby trap in his office and we’ve been stuck in it for three hours.”

“None of that explains why you have a vampire with you, Willow,” Giles said a little distractedly as he stepped in front of Joyce and fumbled around in his pockets for a stake. It was a little unfortunate they couldn’t have gone into this explanation with Harmony untransformed, in hindsight.

Buffy sighed. “Giles, Harmony. Harmony, Giles. You may know each other. Giles, despite appearances and it not really making much sense, Harmony seems pretty housebroken. She didn’t even make any messes when I was out doing my nails.”

“Harmony?” Giles asked. “Oh, yes, the resemblance is obvious now. Did she become ensouled somehow? Something to do with Angel’s presence on the battlefield, perhaps?”

“Soul this, soul that, is there really no vampire that ever did anything reasonable in history besides Angel?” Harmony said. She shook her head violently, managing to change back to human again.

“Come to think of it, Spike can usually manage to stick to a deal,” Buffy said. “He still eats people and causes trouble though.”

“I think it’s probably just the way he was raised,” Joyce said. “If you just give Spike a chance he isn’t so bad.” She looked at Harmony, and stepped around a now flummoxed Giles. “I’m sure you can stay on the straight and narrow if you put your mind to it dear.”

“Truly prosocial behavior from an unmodified vampire would be unprecedented,” Giles said. He didn’t seem to want to question Buffy’s judgement, but pressed on, “Are you truly certain-”

“Nope. Not certain at all,” Buffy said. “But she’s earned a chance for probation at least, even if we might have to make with a more solid thing long term.”

“Harmony, the good vampire without a soul, a warrior so trustworthy death itself was not her match...” Andrew intoned dramatically. Most of them rolled their eyes, but Harmony herself smiled appreciatively of his effort.

Giles just turned to Willow, sighing. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about this spell mishap. I trust you’ve learned to always cast in a well-known and controlled environment in the future?” He looked around the messy office disapprovingly.

“Definitely! Clean room conditions for me, from now on,” Willow said. “I did get the spell right for Amy though, it was just interrupted.” She looked to check that Amy hadn’t gotten away, and luckily Amy hadn’t left her enclosure, even though it was still open on top. She gave a sad little squeak as Willow worriedly inspected her and put the top back on, and rubbed her ratty nose against the glass.

“Wait,” Joyce said, just paying attention to Amy after all the focus on Harmony. “Is that the girl from earlier this year? I’d thought that turning into a rat and back was just something she did. Has she been a rat all this time?” Joyce was looking a little guilty.

“Reversing someone else’s spell safely is complicated!” Willow defended, misinterpreting Joyce’s comment.

“Indeed,” said Giles. “It’s getting late though, and I daresay none of you have eaten properly.” He gave Harmony a significant look at that, and she nodded apologetically, fanging out again at the idea of food. “Do we want to move this to a safer location and finish it tonight, or see to our own needs and adjourn until morning?”


	10. S3.5E2: Spoils V

**[X] Everyone should probably get food and sleep, de-rat Amy tomorrow. Sleepy casters and hungry vampires are a bad mix for spells. Amy will have to do her run on the wheel for one more night.**

“Ms. Summers, your 12’o’clock is here,” Cynthia said over the phone.

“Send him in,” she said, sitting at her desk. She’d dressed a little more professionally today, wearing a black suit jacket and a matching tie.

Her visitor promptly opened the door, and took a seat across from her. “Ms. Summers.”

“Mr. Wilkins.” Something felt a little off, but Buffy wasn’t sure why. He was on her schedule and everything.

He sighed, shaking his head. “I can’t say I like what you’ve done with the place, Buffy. Can I call you Buffy?”

“I’d rather keep it professional, thanks. And I just didn’t like using the stuff you’d left lying around. I think I want to go in a new direction.” Buffy picked at her tie. She didn’t remember buying it.

“I can appreciate someone with vision,” he said. “But are you fully committed to yours? Being a leader is all about making hard decisions, and I’m just not sure that you’re ready for that kind of responsibility.”

“I’ve been making hard decisions for years,” Buffy snapped. She fingered a twisted dagger lying on her desk. “You would remember that, if you really cared!”

“Hey, I don’t appreciate that tone, Missy. And I’ll have you know I cared about her more than I have about anyone in decades.” Wilkins paused, seemingly lost in a memory. “I sort of wanted her to have all this, you know, after I was gone. But maybe that was just me projecting.”

“She was never really responsibility-girl,” Buffy said, trying to smooth things over.

Wilkins just nodded. “But back to my earlier point, just take a look outside. See where the town is going.”

Buffy got up from the desk and opened the shades behind it. She revealed a sunny vista on a crowded beach, filled with familiar faces. She could see her mother and Giles, Cordelia and the Cordettes, a man peddling cheese, and even the Yeti. Everyone was hanging out peacefully and enjoying the day. “Seems fine to me.”

“You might want to take a look at this one though. It’s a real eye-opener.” Wilkins opened the shades on the other side of her corner office, and the outside through that window looked very different. He'd revealed a burning hellscape filled with demons and suffering souls, and the screams of the damned echoed loudly into the office, even though it had been silent before.

Buffy jolted up in her bed, wide awake despite the early hour. She hurriedly checked outside her window, but all she saw was early morning on Revello drive.

* * *

Willow snapped her fingers, and a cascade of red lights spiraled around Harmony before disappearing, leaving the dull basement room only lit by electric lamps. “There. Vegetarian diet for you or else it’s ‘ow, hiss’!”

After some driving around to get take-out and blood from the butcher’s, everyone had gone home and slept, leaving the problem of Harmony locked in an office with a cot until the next day. It wasn’t the most secure solution, but it didn’t have to last and nobody had had the energy to do any better until morning. Morning was now, and Harmony security was being marginally improved.

“I don’t feel any different,” Harmony said. “Are you sure it worked?”

“In fact, my assistant has a test all set up.” Willow said confidently.

At that, Andrew entered the room with a microwaved cup of blood as well as a larger one of water. “It’s lucky the old mayor kept some of this on hand, for emergencies I guess. Getting decently fresh human blood can be a total pain.”

Buffy almost asked why he knew that, but decided that it might be better not to know. She’d just found out about all the blood in the downstairs freezer this morning, and wasn’t sure what they would even do with it all. She didn’t think the hospital would want it back, if that was even where it came from in the first place.

Harmony grabbed the blood mug from Andrew cautiously, and Willow warned her “Only take a little sip, I don’t know how strong the effect is.”

She made a game effort at holding back for a moment, but then just vamped out and took way more than a little sip. It was practically a gulp. She swished it around for a second confused, and then got an alarmed look on her face and spit it out. “Hot hot hot! Too hot!” She grabbed the water out of Andrew’s ready hand and frantically started rinsing.

Willow looked sadly at the new stain in the carpet. “And the clean room was so clean.”

“Ow ow ow! Worry about my mouth being clean, what did that do to my teeth?” Harmony fished a hand mirror out of her purse and tried in vain to use it for a bit before she remembered, and chucked it away in frustration, smashing it on the wall. Her mouth had been smoking for a bit but that had stopped, and at least from what Buffy could see there wasn’t any serious damage.

“So, no more human blood for Harmony?” Buffy asked. She knew that the whole event was a ruse, the ‘test’ blood being laced with a little holy water, but wanted to do her part to sell it.

“Not a drop!” Willow said confidently, doing a great job of keeping her poker face. “The results speak for themselves.”

Harmony finally got herself back together and shook off her game face again. She didn’t like being vampy much, apparently. “If this spell is so easy, why don’t you just do it to every vampire you see?”

Willow’s eyes went wide for a second and she was about to start stuttering, but Andrew saved the day, “It affects willing targets only. If you actively resist it at all it fizzles out.”

Harmony accepted this as standard nerdy lingo and moved on. “I guess that makes sense. So, now that I’m all muzzled, you said something about a mansion?”

“Xander wants to make Crawford street into some kind of base, but it could probably use someone to keep the squatters out.” Buffy paused, thinking. “Nonlethally. It has all the vampire accommodations one might desire, helpfully set up by its former occupant.” Buffy took a little perverse pleasure in sicking the likes of Harmony and Xander on Angel’s old abode. She thought he’d be horrified, and so she wanted to make sure he found out somehow.

“Who actually owns that place anyway?” Willow said offhandedly, as she dustbinned the remnants of Harmony’s mirror.

“We do. It turns out that when you don’t pay property taxes for a bajillion years, your house is not yours anymore. Old Wilkins used to pick up places like that for cents on the dollar just in case they’d come in handy, according to Ian.” She’d sat through more boring lectures about things like that in a week than she’d hoped to in her life, but at least the info was coming in handy.

As Harmony headed out of the room, presumably expecting to go there now, Buffy called after her “Remember daylight. Bright, shiny, lethal.”

“Duh.” Harmony replied. “Cynthia wanted me to help with some filing. I do work here now.” As Harmony left, Buffy wondered if filing had been a standard vampire task before, and if Harmony’s ‘talents’ included anything to do with paperwork. She’d leave that one to Cynthia.

“Amy time?” Buffy asked, looking at her habitat over in the corner.

“Not quite yet. I need to set up the ritual pentagram and everything again, and Giles wanted to be over here to supervise this time. Not that I’m not capable of doing it myself.” Willow said. “Plus with the spell gone all disrupty last time, a couple extra benedictions to Circe beforehand might be wise.”

“Speaking of the detransformation ritual, I should commence with my own preparations.” Andrew said dramatically, leaving as well. A second later, he poked his head back in the door much less dramatically, asking “Did we need Woodland Sage or Common? I always get them mixed up.”

“Woodland, Andrew. Always Woodland for furry things,” Willow answered.

As he left again, Buffy asked “Do you think we’re going to need to pull out bigger guns for Harmony eventually?” She didn’t actively mention that the gun they had now was totally false. Harm had good ears, even theoretically across the building.

Willow grimaced. “Messing with that ensouling curse would be really hard. It was made with a specific target in mind; changing the noun genders is the least of what I’d have to do. It’s really worse than that, because when I was casting it before I was really ‘recasting’ it. I could sort of just go with the flow.”

“Harmony isn’t so flow-congruent?” Buffy said, (ab)using her hard-won SAT knowledge.

“Her gradient is all over the place,” Willow replied. “I don’t think the original conditions of the curse would even resolve, and who knows what I could replace them with. Plus there’s the whole intent thing. This is technically a curse; if it isn’t the sort of thing that would ‘hurt’ vampire Harmony somehow, it might backfire catastrophically. Big rituals are finicky like that. I might be able to come up with something, but I’d have to learn way more about curses and it’d be a ton of work.”

“I’ll trust you to know what you’re doing, Will.” Buffy said, then frowned. “I’ve been monopolizing a ton of your special orientation time with the big recruitment drive and everything, are the parental units OK?”

“It’s alright for now, but I am still kind of swamped,” she replied. “It’s really interesting though! I was looking into the computer science program this week, and they have a huge processor farm and their own heavy-duty internet connection. It made me think of some of the stuff Ms. Calendar used to show me, I could really make some of those spells whiz on that setup!”

“Looking to follow in her witchy footsteps?” Buffy asked. “You were in fine form with the pencils yesterday.”

“I dunno. They’re a little disappointing against non-vampires.” Willow sat down by Amy’s cage and popped it open, putting in her finger. Amy gave it a little nuzzle. “There’s just so much to do, and so much I want to look at. There are all these new magical texts, and even though they’re a little dark, they’re also mondo informative and useful. I learned more about invocation cramming to help Amy in the last couple days than I have in months. Wilkins even left all these magical items around, and it feels crazy to just ignore them.”

“Or leave them to someone else?” Buffy said mischievously.

Willow pouted. “I guess Andrew’s OK, and Jonathan expressed an interest in magic too. Plus there’s a few other people we reached out to, and Amy will hopefully be girl-shaped and witchy again.” Amy let out a squeak at that, making both of them stop and look. Maybe she really was more conscious as a rat than Buffy had been. “But it’s not the same as doing it myself. I kind of wish I could major in magic at UC Sunnydale, but obviously that’s a bit of a non-starter.”

“Just do what your heart says. I’m sure you’ll be successful Willow whatever you try.” Buffy said.

“And what about your heart?” Willow said wisely. “It wasn’t so long ago you wanted to be all normal-girl, but you’ve kind of gotten into the wrong kind of summer job for that.”

“Trying to be normal girl didn’t get me what I really wanted.” Maybe if all this had happened a month ago, Angel wouldn’t have left. Not that she wasn’t totally done with him now. But still. Being mayor of Sunnydale was apparently a pretty vampire-inclusive future, if the events of the past 24 hours had shown her anything. “I mean, there’s no guarantee this whole thing will last. By fall there’ll probably be a big election and I’ll be off to be college student Buffy, with optional slay accessories and write-in major course of study.”

Willow just gave her a skeptical look, and Buffy had to admit her prediction was seeming increasingly unlikely. Even her slayer dreams seemed to want her to take this seriously. “If not me, then who, huh?”

“Pretty much.” Willow took her hand comfortingly.

“Squeak.”


	11. S3.5E3: Thin Gold Line I

**Previously, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:**

_EXT. SCHOOL - DAY_

_SNYDER: I'm doing everything I can. But you people have to realize that - (as people pass) -- backed up sewer line, this happened in San Diego just last week - (they're gone) -- that we are on a Hellmouth. Sooner or later, people are going to figure that out._

_CHIEF MONROE: The city council was told you could handle this job. If you feel you can't... perhaps you'd like to take that up... with the Mayor._

* * *

_INT. LIBRARY - NIGHT_

_COP: Back away from the girl! Put your hands up and back away slowly!_

_BUFFY: But, I didn't --_

_INT. HALL - NIGHT_

_\-- a bullet smashing the window in one of the doors, just missing Buffy as she takes off out of the building._

_The cop speaks into his walkie as the other takes off after Buffy._

_COP: All units, we have a fugitive on foot at the high school, homicide suspect, female, blonde, approximately sixteen years old, suspect is very dangerous --_

* * *

_INT. GILES' APARTMENT - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT_

_OZ: By the way, you're not wanted for murder anymore._

_BUFFY: Oh, good. That was such a drag._

* * *

_EXT. LODGE - DAY_

_RORY: (Gesticulating angrily) So you can see why I’m a little agitated: the town seems to be going to the wolves, the Mayor’s either dead or missing in action, and the police station won’t even take our calls! They just told us they don’t have time for ‘petty vandalism’ right now and hung up! What are our property taxes even paying for?_

* * *

**S3.5E3: Thin Gold Line**

“Ms. Summers, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” Vanessa had shown up and caught Buffy outside City Hall just as the day was winding down. Long summer hours meant that the sun was still well up in the sky, but City Hall employees old and new were wandering off to experience what little of the Saturday they could. Succession crises didn’t take days off.

“I want to preserve the illusion that this was a good day with only good things just a little bit longer. Give me good news,” Buffy said.

Vanessa smiled and pulled an open envelope out of her oversized handbag, stuffed with official looking documents. “You’ve officially been notarized by Sacramento as acting mayor of Sunnydale until the special election, even though the case of Richard’s ‘disappearance’ is still open.”

Buffy took the envelope and paged through its mysterious contents, full of dense type and important looking signatures. She supposed her signature was important now too. “I’m not even surprised this happened so fast. I’m more surprised it happened at all. Do they even know I’m 18?”

“Under most circumstances, an 18 year old unilaterally appointed mayor by the sole remaining city counselor would have probably been a little more difficult to get by the censors,” Vanessa said. “It isn’t about what you do in politics though, it’s about who you know, and I happen to know a lot of the right people, even outside this deathtrap of a city.” She smiled a savage little old lady smile.

“It’s a major burden off my shoulders,” Buffy said. “I think I’m going to have enough trouble with demons questioning my legitimacy, at least I won’t be dealing with it from humans too.”

“We can only hope. That brings me to the bad news though.” With that, she pulled an even thicker folder out of the same handbag and gave it to Buffy. “The police are off the reservation, and it’s getting worse by the day. That’s a folder of complaints just from the past week; letters, transcripts, there’s even a photo or two in there. The police aren’t just ignoring their jobs anymore, they’re an active detriment. The main question left is whether Chief Monroe has lost control of his force or if this is all his doing.”

Buffy paged through this too, and it was definitely clear it was bad. There was stuff about spurious tickets, illegal search and seizure, and even people suspicious of worse. Any of the complaints alone could’ve maybe just been a disgruntled citizen, but the weight of all of them together definitely said troubling things.

Buffy’s impulse was to run down and do some policing of her own right away, but Vanessa cautioned her, “Now, as bad as it is, I still don’t think you should go off half-cocked. Whatever you are, the police station is still a clubhouse full of self-important men with guns, so a bit of forethought is in order here, I’d say.”

“Do you think I should gather a big gang of … investigators?” Buffy winced. “I don’t really have much experience in doing things all legally. More like ‘you bad’, ‘I slay!’”

“There are a lot of ways you could approach it. Going with some backup will probably help you push them around, and the more evidence you have to throw in their faces the better. I’ll even come along myself when you’re ready to go, just to watch Monroe squirm. Just make sure you have all your angles planned out before you get there, he’s a slippery pig.”

“You’re right. I have a pretty speckled past with Sunnydale P.D. on top of all this too.” Buffy narrowed her eyes. “If it’s thinking to be done though, I know just the girl for the job.” Willow had left a few minutes ago, but she was sure she could still catch her if she ran.

* * *

“I figure, when life gives you computers, make computeraide,” Willow said. Willow had made a call when Buffy caught her last night, and set up a trip to UC Sunnydale to hack into the police department. Buffy figured that more information before pulling the trigger wasn't a bad way to go.

“My Willow, always an improviser.” Oz was driving them out to UC Sunnydale’s campus in his van. It wasn’t an unwalkable trek, but it would’ve been a bit of a reach, especially moving at speeds Willow could handle. Buffy wondered if she’d be able to cop rides from people working at City Hall come the fall.

“Really, even without the magic part it’s pretty cool,” Willow continued. “Neither of you has declared a major yet right? You should both totally give the old Babbage machines a try. They’re the wave of the future.”

“I’m not sure I’m a good enough academic swimmer for waves Will,” Buffy said. “Maybe like, small ripples.”

“Hey! Don’t be all humble-girl, your SATs totally said different.” Willow turned to Buffy now, a scolding expression on her face. “The only reason your grades weren’t that great is you needed to spend so much time slaying instead of studying.”

“And now I have not only slaying, but mayoring. I’m skeptical of my academic prowess this year.” Buffy had been worrying about how she would square the circle of what amounted to three full time occupations come September.

“A lot of people work their way through school, but yeah, it is a bit much.” Willow admitted. “Maybe you could talk to the Dean about scaling your credit hours back? Or even some other accommodation? I mean, you are the freaking mayor of his town, I’m sure you can work something out.”

“I’m not sure I want to go down Wilkins’ path of corruption and favor trading, Will.” Buffy did kind of wish all this had somehow happened when Snyder was still her principal though. Being able to make threats to him aside from the pointy ones would’ve been really satisfying.

“Don’t look at it as corruption, look at it as official business,” Willow said. “That’s how I got the lab time today. No waiting list for an ‘official city hall feasibility study’.

“What are we studying the feasibility of?” Oz asked.

“Hacking into the police mainframe of our own city, apparently,” Buffy replied.

“I left it vague,” Willow said.

Shortly, they arrived and headed into UC Sunnydale’s computer building. The open floor was filled with rows of computers for the student body, but they were mostly empty given that it was a summer Sunday. Willow quickly led them to the back, clearly knowing the ins and outs of the place despite having been involved with it for less than a week. There was a stereotypical grad student with glasses and ponytail presumably guarding a closed door, but actually immersed in whatever he was working on with his own computer.

“Hi Max, We’re here for the 9 o’clock slot,” Willow said. “Willow Rosenberg, Buffy Summers, and Daniel Osbourne.” Buffy cringed a bit hearing what time it was, and mourned her precious sleep schedule.

He started, looking up quickly, and then down at a clipboard. “Oh, the official thing. Are you the new mayor’s daughter?” he asked Buffy.

Buffy was becoming resigned to permanent and total confusion between her and her mother. “I’m actually the mayor. Acting mayor.”

He blanched. “Oh, I’m sorry miss, Ms. mayor I mean.” He waved them through. “You don’t look a day over twenty-five,” he said apologetically.

Buffy had taken half a cue from her dream and dressed a little more professionally, though maybe she’d gone too far. “Thanks? I think.”

As they entered the room and Willow sat down in front of a terminal, Buffy commented “I’m not sure what part of that interaction was the most awkward.”

“He checked you out at the end too,” Oz said.

Buffy just shook her head resignedly and pulled out a seat, while Oz just stood behind her and put his arms over Willow's shoulders. She nestled back into him as she dug a floppy disk out of her backpack. “I put this all together last night to save time today. I just need to run the program on the bigger system here, add magic, and stir.”

A black window full of text opened on the screen, and Willow’s typing fell into a rhythmic pattern. Lots of nonsense stuff was flying past really fast and Buffy couldn’t really see what she was doing, but her face was scrunched up in a serious look, and Buffy’s sharp eyes could tell that some of her keypresses were simultaneous, almost as if she was playing a piano instead of a keyboard.

Oz seemed to fall into the silence easily, and Buffy wanted to fill it with something other than clicking noises but was afraid of disrupting Willow’s concentration. The minutes stretched on, and just as Buffy was about to take a risk and say something, Willow’s work on the keyboard reached a crescendo and she said “Done!”

“Great!” Buffy said. “So we’re in their whatever now and can see all their stuff?”

“No and yes,” Willow said confusingly. “The police are actually setup as part of the statewide system, and their security isn’t bad. Forcing my way in would take a cracked password or a forced backdoor. But the beauty of having all this computing power available is I don’t have to even get in.”

She opened up a few windows, covering the screen with maps and databases. “What I did was use the principle of sympathy to create a mirror of it, kind of like scrying. Some of the details can get distorted, and obviously we can’t edit anything, but we can’t get caught either, and it’s sort of technically not even illegal!”

“That’s good Will.” Buffy was a little worried at how much sense that had made. She might get sucked into a computer class after all. “What do we have on them though?”

“Well, this does seem to corroborate a lot of the complaints,” she said. “No call records or investigation backlogs, lots of ‘drug busts’ recently and nothing logged into actual evidence, and they totally have a ticket scam going. We should make a public announcement quick to send all ticket proceeds to City Hall instead of the police. I’m looking for something new though.”

Willow paused for a bit, then put a map alongside one of the spreadsheets. “Hmm. Oz, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

Oz nodded. “Lots of smoke, no fire.”

“I thought this was the police department we were looking at,” Buffy joked.

Willow just explained “These maps are supposed to be for analyzing crime patterns, but the hotspots aren’t matching up with the crimes recorded in the database. I think they must be using them to track something else.”

“You said the spell might distort things. Can we trust the locations on the map?” Buffy asked.

Willow tilted her hand back and forth. “We can trust them enough. Some of them will be right and some might be off by a house or two, but the discrepancy is definitely real.”

“Well this was definitely helpful,” Buffy said. “Can we print-” she was cut off by the sound of a printer revving up behind her.

“I’ll save the essentials of the database mirror too, so we can look at it again from anywhere if we need to,” Willow said, making a few clicks, snapping her fingers a couple times, and popping out the floppy again.

Buffy wasn’t sure what to do next. At this point, she had plenty of evidence, and could round up a mob of minions to come with her and engage the police department in person. On the other hand, she could try searching some of the locations on the map to find out more, either alone or with backup.


	12. S3.5E3: Thin Gold Line II

**[X][Buffy] Buffy goes around town investigating interesting locations on the map.**

**[X][Minions] Oz [X][Minions] Jonathan [X][Minions] Andrew**

“This is so exciting! An epic fellowship on a desperate quest to restore law and order to our fair city, with only a mysterious map to guide our way.” Andrew was providing both commentary and optimism, and to be fair, there wasn’t much of that to go around. Buffy kept reminding herself that he’d been useful in the maze.

“This map is mysterious all right,” Jonathan said. “I’m pretty sure the last street we tried to find on it didn’t even exist.” Jonathan had been very impressed with Willow’s spellwork as their mission began hours ago, but a string of bizarre failures had rendered him more skeptical as time went on. He’d tried to maintain his enthusiasm, but the search for ‘Flenham street’ had been wearying for them all (except maybe Andrew.)

“Willow did say the spell wasn’t the best for detail work.” It just also happened to not be second or third best. Buffy glanced back down at the map in question she’d been using to direct Oz from the shotgun seat in the van. He’d been his usual unflappable self the whole time, and still seemed to have a quiet confidence that the mission would find something.

Eventually, she decided on another promising tickmark. “This one is pretty nearby, and I’ve patrolled past some of these abandoned warehouses near it before so I think it’s actually there. Oz, go left.”

After a few more turns, they got to the location on the map, and this one actually seemed pretty consistent with what was pictured. They parked on the deserted road and Buffy led the group forward to the rusted rolling door.

“157 Spinner. Just as predicted,” Oz said. He’d brushed off a plate by the side of the door with the address on it, and had a satisfied look on his face.

“Finally, the party reaches the gates of the dungeon. But they must beware! All manner of terrifying creatures are afoot in these lands,” Andrew said. At this point, people were mostly just ignoring him.

Buffy reached for the bottom of the door expecting a bit of a struggle, but she was surprised when it rolled up and away smoothly. “Huh, not even locked.”

The interior of the warehouse was dark, and Jonathan handed out flashlights to everyone to light their way. “Doesn’t seem like anyone’s inside.”

“I think someone was here today though,” Oz said. “Smells like cigarettes and shoe leather.”

“They’ll probably be back then, if they left the place open,” Buffy said. She contemplated setting an ambush or something, but they’d already spent too much time going in circles. It could be hours before they came back. And even if they did, Buffy was the mayor now. She shouldn’t have to ambush them. She could just be authoritative at them or something. “But whatever, we’ll deal with that if it happens. Split up, search the place.”

The inside of the warehouse was cavernous but mostly empty. There were some rusting hulks of machinery scattered about and a couple old shipping containers sitting around, but aside from that it was bare to the walls. Buffy wondered how many places like this were just sitting around rotting in Sunnydale. It seemed bad for the city.

She poked into one of the shipping containers. It had apparently contained lightbulbs, but someone had been through it already, with lots of cases tossed around and some more opened up and scattered about. The sheer waste of it was a little irritating, moreso because it was clear there wasn’t anything special here. She remembered arguing over lightbulbs at the budget meeting just days ago, the things definitely weren’t free. Just as she was contemplating gathering a bunch of the still intact ones into Oz’s van, Jonathan called out “I think I might have something!”

The rest of them gathered around, and Jonathan showed them an oversized manhole near the back of the warehouse. From the looks of some nearby crates scattered around, it might have been hidden before, but it was exposed in plain view now. Jonathan had removed the rather large steel cover from it, but underneath that was another more solid looking covering with some kind of large and nasty locking mechanism placed across it. It was battered and scratched up, but still looked secure. Jonathan was poking at it but didn’t seem like he was able to make any progress.

“I think the guy was here,” Oz said. “Seems like he wasn’t a big fan of this door.”

“He was truly stymied by this clever puzzle,” Andrew said. “He couldn’t solve the riddle, and tried to get at its secrets with brute force!”

Jonathan wasn’t paying the peanut gallery a lot of attention, and just kept working at the mechanism. “It’s almost like something’s missing. There’s nowhere to put a key or enter a combination, just a lot of sharp edges and a sliding bit.”

Buffy considered the lock; it looked well made, but old, and it wasn’t really that big or thick. “Give me some space. Maybe I can just rip this thing off. Brute force has its uses.”

Jonathan scrambled out of the way and Buffy positioned herself to get a good grip. The moment she grabbed it though, it seemed to slip on its own and cut her. “Yikes!” She moved her hand back to suck on her finger, but even as she did, the lock grinded around in a spiral motion and opened itself.

“An offering of blood often smooths the way. Excellent thinking, fearless leader!” Andrew said.

“Don’t think it was intentional,” Oz said.

“Yeah, it’s like it was jonesing to nip on me in particular.” Buffy took a look at her finger. The cut was pretty minor and the bleeding had already stopped, but the mystical mojo going on was vaguely worrying.

“Well, however it happened, it’s open now. We might as well take a look.” Jonathan said, though he didn’t make any move to actually open it.

Buffy swung the cover open and revealed a dark storeroom below. It seemed to mostly be filled with crates, though there were a few loose books sitting around too. Buffy jumped down, ignoring the small ladder, and put her light on one of the books. The dull white cover read ‘Osseum Necroz’.

“Cheery place here. Must’ve really thrown someone’s back out all these moving down.” Buffy hoped there was something actually useful in them, but had a sneaking suspicion this was just a big old pile of gross magic stuff. She popped the top of a crate, and yup, sure enough, it was a crate full of giant teeth. She knew someone probably would want them, but she almost wished it was just more lightbulbs.

“Oh, are those teeth?” Andrew was apparently in favor of teeth over lightbulbs, from his optimistic tone. He scrambled down the the ladder and looked into the crate next to her. “Wow, I don’t know what species they are, but they’re really something. You can do a lot with teeth. Wow! And this is one of the Necroz tomes. Those are really rare, this must be like, a cache of magic bone stuff!”

Andrew was trying to open up another crate when they were both distracted by a shout from above, “Hey! Who’s in there!” an angry voice echoed down.

“Official City Hall warehouse inspection,” said Oz.

“This is already official, official police business! And you’re just some kid!” The voice wasn’t convinced.

“Andrew, hide down here,” Buffy whispered, and then she headed up carefully. She’d need to play it cool if she didn’t want a disaster up there, and she thought she recognized that voice.

“Just hold your horses up there,” she called up as she ascended the short ladder. “This might be police business, Detective Stein, but that’s my business too now.” She was thankful for dressing up a bit today now, though the detritus of the warehouse hadn’t done her outfit any favors.

Climbing out, she saw it was indeed Detective Stein harassing Oz and Jonathan. He had a uniform with him, it looked like they’d brought along a jackhammer or something. Apparently everyone but her was really into magic bones.

“Oh, really. Now the local gang leader thinks she’s all official because she’s occupying City Hall.” Stein was apparently unimpressed with her impersonation of a calm, adult authority figure.

She put her hand to her head, not entirely faking nursing a headache. “People keep assuming that for some reason. A girl works out a little bit, and suddenly she must be a rogue element outside the law.”

“It has less to do with your doping habits and more to do with all the bodies that tend to pile up at your feet.” Stein said dismissively. “Ted Buchanan, Kendra Young, and even the deputy mayor, Allan Finch.”

“I didn’t kill any of those people,” Buffy said, more frustrated by the second with this encounter. “Well, I killed something calling itself Ted, but it was just a robot. I have a feeling you know a little more than you like to let on about things like that, detective, digging around in warehouses for magical skeletons.”

A greedy look passed over Stein’s face when she mentioned the cellar’s contents, and he eyed the open manhole behind her carefully, then exchanged a look with his partner. “We can debate past history until we’re blue in the face, but maybe this isn’t the time,” he said. “If you kids just go on your way, we’ll collect our evidence and we can forget this encounter ever even happened.”

“What is this even supposed to be evidence of?” Jonathan interjected boldly. “It looks like you just came here to steal! Are you looting the whole city? We need these resources to actually fix this place for the people who live here!”

Stein’s partner responded “You can’t imagine the grand purpose we’re serving! She-”

Stein elbowed him and cut off anything else, but narrowed his eyes and put his hand on his gun. “You can all get out of our way, or you can all be under arrest. Doesn’t matter any to me.”

“Look, detective.” Buffy said, crossing the short distance between them and getting up in his face. “Maybe you didn’t get the memo. I’m not just unofficial Annie Oakley out there anymore, I’m actually in charge of this mess we call a city. It’s a hundred and ten percent official, whether I wanted it to be or not, and yet here you are, making a nuisance of yourself and causing problems. Now what is it? Is this some kind of cult you’ve gotten yourselves into? Is our police department such a disgrace that you can’t even properly stay out of my hair while I’m trying to put out other fires?”

Stein backed up a step as she confronted him, looking more defensive now. “You can’t fight the law, Summers, even if you think you can fight me.” She heard the click of a gun and flinched, ready to dodge, but it wasn’t on her.

Stein’s partner had his gun on Jonathan, at point blank range. Somehow she hadn’t thought they’d actually be this crazy. Jonathan was cautiously raising his hands and edging backwards.

“They don’t seem to be in a listening mood, Buffy,” Oz said.

Stein drew his gun now too, with Buffy effectively paralyzed by the danger Jonathan was in. “You just couldn’t do this the easy way. I guess you never do. Let’s all take a ride back to the station.”


	13. S3.5E3: Thin Gold Line III

**[X] Buffy waits for the first decent opportunity, and makes her move to disarm the uniform with a gun on Jonathan. She’s pretty sure she’s fast enough, and things are just going to get more dangerous once they’re totally surrounded back at the police station.**

“So, tell me more about your cult.” Buffy knew she could work their way out of this soon enough; it was just important to keep the dirty cops talking as much as she could. It’d distract them, and might even reveal more about whatever annoying weird thing was going on today. “Do you have to be an actual police officer, or can anyone just join? Are there sign-up sheets?”

“Only the chosen may serve Vendoat the Gold! Your flippancy is an insult.” Stein’s partner seemed a little less with it, but possibly more fanatical. Good and bad.

Stein pulled out a pair of cuffs left-handed while keeping his gun on her. “Let me put these on you and we can talk all you want.” They looked like flimsy toys compared to the chains Angel had kept around for his various purposes.

Buffy obligingly put her hands forward as she continued, “How do people get chosen though? I’ve been chosen already, does that count?”

“Behind your back!” Stein demanded, waving them angrily.

This was a little riskier. Buffy slowly turned around, keeping her eyes locked on Oz. She was pretty sure he would give her a signal if Stein just decided to cap her in back, and hopefully she could react in time. She didn’t think that was his play though; he seemed to be following his police reflexes despite the strange situation.

Turning around did let her get a better look at the officer holding Jonathan at gunpoint. “So what’s your name anyway? I figure a mayor should try to get to know her constituents.” She felt Stein fumbling around with her hands trying to cuff her as she talked.

He hesitated to answer, and Jonathan was still a bit too intimidated to participate, but Oz backed her up, “She’s really a people person. She asks what she can do for you, and for Vendoat.”

Weirdly enough, that did the trick. “I’m Derrick.” He paused after that a little awkwardly. “There’s this traffic sign on Maple Street where it goes by Restfield, something must have got it at some point and it really needs replacing. My niece lives by there.”

“Oh, I know that one!” Buffy said. “You’re totally right, I remember sticking a vampire on the little stump of it last month. It’s been broken at least that long.”

“Yeah, it’s down to one of those cut off stump things,” he agreed.

“It’s criminal that nothing’s been done already,” she said. “I’ll definitely-”

“You won’t do anything, because you’ll be in jail, where you belong!” Stein yelled. He’d finally finished with her handcuffs, and got out another pair, moving towards Oz. He seemed a little unsure where he should point his gun for a second, and finally settled on keeping it on her, moving in an arc to get to Oz and gesturing at him with the new handcuffs.

“So,” Buffy continued on cheerily, “That’s what you need from the city, what does Vendoat need? Maybe we can help her together.”

“Well, Vendoat mainly needs wealth to grow larger, she’s very hungry,” Derrick replied. Then realizing something, he frowned, “She probably wouldn’t want the city to spend anything on the sign repair actually, she would want the money for herself.”

“Can you please stop spilling all our secrets?” Stein complained.

“Well, it’s not like they’re going anywhere anyway,” Derrick said. “Maybe she really wants to help. Vendoat is pretty great.”

Stein was looking pretty frustrated. “Obviously she doesn’t want to help, you dolt. We were arguing-” He was interrupted though, by an unholy crash and clatter from the manhole, like a gigantic pile of legos falling over. He managed to keep his composure, but Derrick spun to look, and spun his gun around at the opening fearfully. Go time.

Buffy flashed into motion, snapping the chain on the cuffs like a twig and dashing for Derrick. Stein squeezed off a wild shot, but it missed her by feet and Oz was wrestling him for the gun before he could do anything else.

Derrick saw Buffy coming and didn’t really manage to decide if he should aim for her or Jonathan before she got there, tearing the gun right out of his hands with a crack and elbowing him hard in the gut. He was knocked to the floor and stayed down as Buffy pivoted to get to Stein and Oz.

Oz wasn’t a big guy, but he was pretty strong for his size. Stein hadn’t made any progress by the time Buffy got there and separated them like children, grabbing Stein’s gun away as she dropped the other and jamming him back against the wall one handed. She was careful not to use her full strength; she didn’t want to break him (much.)

“Well, wasn’t that a fun little activity,” she said sarcastically. “Get to know your local corrupt cops as they cuff you at gunpoint. Maybe I should introduce it at the schools as a learning initiative.”

Oz helpfully grabbed up the other gun, as well as the handcuffs Stein had fumbled in the struggle. He helpfully walked over and used them to secure Derrick, who still hadn’t gotten up, but was already starting to make noises, so he was probably fine. Jonathan still seemed a little dazed. Buffy supposed looking down a gun barrel might’ve felt a little more real than fighting a horde of vampires.

Stein wasn’t bothering to struggle much, but she had half an eye on his hands in case he tried to reach for anything cheeky on his belt. “The department will know I’m missing,” Stein said, coughing a bit in her light choke-hold. “They’ll come after me.”

“Guess we’ll have to come after them first,” Buffy said flippantly.

“Hey guys.” Andrew’s voice sounded from the open manhole. “Can I come up now?”

“Sure,” Buffy said. “You have an interesting definition of hiding.”

“I was looking for something I could help you guys with. I didn’t mean to knock over the crate,” Andrew said. “Bones are really loud.”

“Yes they are, Andrew.” Buffy rolled her eyes. Well, it could’ve gone worse.

* * *

When they got back to City Hall, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum were summarily divested of their gear, handcuffed to a desk, and locked in an office. They stopped talking after the tables turned, and nobody was sure what else they could do with them. Buffy was despairing a bit that even though she’d inherited this place from Wilkins, she was probably the one who was going to need to put in a dungeon.

“So they’ve been inducted into some kind of cult?” Giles asked. People had congregated in the conference room to debate what to do. There were less books than the library had had, but the skylight at least let in some dusky illumination.

“Following a ‘Vendoat the Gold’,” Jonathan said. “Detective Stein was being pretty cagey about it, but his partner couldn’t seem to say enough about her.”

“A most unusual name,” Giles said. He got up as if to check his references, then looked around and sat back down disappointedly.

“Hey! Maybe Vendoat is a common name in her family. People’s names should be verboten of mockery,” Buffy said.

Giles just shook his head. “In any case, it seems some form of mind control is a strong possibility. I would expect corruption from the organization, but this level of blatant disregard for the law combined with the veneration of a mysterious figure is very suggestive.”

“The name wasn’t the weirdest part,” Oz said. “Apparently she needed to grow. The kind of growth that comes from being hungry for wealth.”

“Well, at least she isn’t hungry for people,” Xander said. He’d scrambled back from Crawford Street for the meeting. “I see it as a welcome change.”

“Still haven’t eaten anyone,” Harmony said in an annoyed tone. She’d come in Xander’s car, riding unglamourously in the trunk. “A couple of those guys from training today sort of deserved it though. So handsy!”

Giles ignored the byplay, “Wealth, you say? For growth? It could be a Rusting Demon or one of several types of dangerous ooze, however,” He paused, dramatically. “I believe the most likely common denominator between that and mind control is a dragon.”

“A dragon!” Xander asked. “Like, giant flying fire breathing lizard of doom?”

“It may not yet be very large, especially given we haven’t noticed it yet, though in optimal conditions some varieties can grow very quickly,” Giles said. “From the osseomancy supplies you located, much of Wilkins' wealth is in the sort of valuable and esoteric items that allow for that kind of speed. If the police have already recovered other stashes, we may have little time to waste."

“So, dragonslaying. I guess I haven’t gotten to do that one yet,” Buffy said dryly. “And speed dragonslaying too. I always wanted to speed skate, this could be the next best thing.”

“Getting at it could be kind of tricky,” Xander said. “It’s easy enough for a slayer like Buffy to dodge one or two shooters, but if the police are guarding their station at all competently they’re watching all the entrances and could even have kill zones set up. It’ll be a nightmare to attack.”

Vanessa coughed from her seat by Ian, injecting herself into the conversation, “Well, I definitely can’t help you slay a dragon, but we do have a solution to your police problem.” She unfolded some old yellowed plans onto the table.

“Richard may have had the police bought and paid for, but he didn’t trust them either,” she said, as Ian indicated a specific place. “He apparently had a secret sewer entrance built into the station when it was constructed in the fifties; Ian found it when investigating possible boltholes. We hadn’t been sure if the police had discovered it, but we can’t find any mention of it in the files we were given, and the room it accesses seems to just be used for long-term storage now, from the mentions we could find.”

Buffy walked over and gave the plans a close look. “OK, seems like a plan. I trespass, I sneak, I slay. Good work you two.”

“Do you really think you should go in alone, Buff?” Xander asked. He looked at his sling and grimaced. “I mean, I probably shouldn’t be going to help you, but-”

“I’m afraid anyone else would just get in her way.” Jonathan said. “She was so fast in the warehouse it was almost like she could dodge bullets. If she had to worry about other people it might just get her hurt. The cops are smart enough to use us against her.” Everyone paused at that, clearly unhappy.

“I could go.” Harmony said.

“You’re volunteering?” Buffy asked.

Harmony shrugged. “Bullets aren’t exactly going to do much to me. I can be useful as more than a training dummy.”

Giles started to speak, stopped, and then decided to say something after all, “That isn’t entirely true. You could find yourself severely disabled by a shot to the head or a joint, and even barring that, the pain of a gunshot wound could be incapacitating. Guns aren’t reliable or optimal weapons against vampires, but they aren’t useless either.”

Harmony hesitated, but said, “Well, at least they won’t kill me, and I’m faster now. They won’t be able to use me as a hostage or anything.”

Buffy looked her up and down. “Are you sure you can control yourself? These cops are humans, and might even just be mind controlled into all this. We don't want any of them hurt. Too badly.”

“I’ll be gentle,” Harmony said. “Uncross my heart.” She started making a weird sign over her chest with her hand, but got confused and gave up midway through.


	14. S3.5E3: Thin Gold Line IV

**[X] Harmony can hopefully be trusted not to kill anyone, and Buffy shouldn’t go to fight a probable dragon in hostile territory without support. Buffy and Harmony infiltrate the police station together.**

“You’re sure you had enough blood right? This could be kind of tricky, I want you in prime fighting shape.” Buffy chose not to mention that she also didn’t want Harmony hungry around humans in the heat of battle.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I actually don’t like having too much of it, it makes me feel kind of bloated.” Harmony followed Buffy through the sewers as they talked. Harmony’s senses were a little better in the dark, but Buffy had been tromping around in Sunnydale’s sewers for years and had a better idea where they were going. “Can vampires get fat? That would suck, totally a reason to cut back on blood.”

Buffy boggled a bit at the idea. “I don’t think so? I’ve seen some fat vampires in my day, but they were all fledges. I think they were probably that way before. I wonder why none of them ever grow up to be older, now that you mention it.”

“The way Xander talks it sounds like that’s pretty hard.” Harmony said. “Surviving, I mean. Lots of weak minions around all the time, but he could count the number of big name old vampires on his hands.”

“And yet here you are,” Buffy said. Fighting dragons was pretty dangerous even for a slayer.

“I know, it seems stupid right?” Harmony’s voice cracked a little bit. “But it’s just, everything is so exciting now. I’ve got all these new senses and instincts and it’s like, I was dead before and now I’m alive, instead of the reverse. I could have just stayed quiet and manned a desk tonight but I didn’t want to, you know?”

Buffy wasn’t sure how to respond, so she was quiet for a while as they traveled through the Sunnydale undercity. Was it weird that more than anyone, Harmony reminded her of Jonathan right now? She knew she was biting off more than she could chew, but she couldn’t stop herself. Did their lives suck so bad in the normal world that they couldn’t stop from throwing themselves into this? Harmony had seemed happy before, in her own terrible way, but Buffy hadn’t really known her.

And Jonathan had almost gotten shot today. Was bringing Harmony into this really a good call? She wasn’t another slayer or a hundreds year old master, she was just a fledgling, and could easily get herself dusted in a fight like this. She wasn’t human, she didn’t have a soul, but something in Buffy felt a little sick at thinking of Harmony as some expendable shield to be ruined and thrown away. She’d just have to try to keep an eye on her.

“OK, I think this is it,” Buffy said. There was a smaller tunnel going off the main branch, and it led to a dead end about twenty feet down. She wasn’t deterred however, and put her both hands against the brickwork, searching for the specific pair that the plans had indicated. After a little messing around, she got it, and both bricks clicked in with a snap. The wall to their side swung open a little bit before stopping.

Buffy peeked through the crack and saw a dusty storeroom full of all sorts of random stuff. The trick wall was caught behind a shelf, so she reached through and carefully pushed it out of the way, making room for her and Harmony to get inside. They carefully moved around the roomful of accumulated crap until they reached a door, its underside bright with light from the hall outside.

Buffy got out her pair of dark sunglasses, and motioned for Harmony to do the same. Giles had thought dragon mind control was based on eye contact, and this was the best solution they’d been able to come up with. There were at least some straps attached made out of hair bands to keep them on during a fight, despite Harmony’s complaints that they looked really stupid. The only other concession to dragonslaying the group had been able to come up with was a trusty short sword Giles had lying around, one shaped a little like a gladius. It would be agile enough to use in close quarters and could give Buffy great stabbing power to get through toughened scales. Harmony was unarmed due to a lack of appropriate skills, but vampires always had supernaturally sharp teeth to compensate.

“Can you hear anyone on the other side of the door?” Buffy whispered. She couldn’t, but her senses weren’t really the best at that kind of thing.

Harmony concentrated with her ear to the door. “I think I can hear some clicking, kind of far away. Nobody is close enough for me to make out a heartbeat.”

Buffy took a chance, cracking the door and letting it slide open a bit, peeking through from the darkness. The storage room opened up to the end of an empty hallway, and she and Harmony quietly snuck out into the light, sticking to the wall. Most of the doors were closed, but one was left open, and Buffy could hear the clicking now too; someone was probably typing on something inside.

Buffy signaled for Harmony to get low, hoping that the desk and whatever the person was working on would be enough of an obstruction. They both went at the same time, scooting by, and stopped on the other side of the door. They heard the typing stop, and looked at each other indecisively, but before either of them decided to do anything it started again. They nodded and continued on.

They reached a T-junction and weren’t sure where to go, but just then there was a loud grinding noise that rang down the hall from the left. Buffy was about to poke her head around the corner to check it out, but a voice called out from behind them. “Hey! Who are you? What are you doing down here?”

They turned and noticed that it was the mystery typist, probably drawn out from his room by the same loud sound that had distracted them. Before they could try to lie their way out of the situation though, the policeman shouted, “Summers! You’re under arrest!” Without waiting for a response, he drew out a gun and started shooting at them.

Buffy grabbed the still-surprised Harmony and dodged them behind the corner. “I miss being anonymous,” she said. “Not a week of being mayor and now everyone knows my face.”

“Might just be the signage.” Harmony pointed out a wanted poster of her visible on the wall. She was apparently ‘very dangerous’ again.

“Our cover’s blown either way, let’s just go,” Buffy said, and they ran towards the source of the noise.

It originated in a large room with a heavy door, labeled with ‘EVIDENCE’. The door was open, and when they looked inside it was apparent that this was the dragon’s lair. It was the size of a lion, but gawkier, with clumsy wings and a long bendy neck, and it was scarfing down what looked like a box of silverware. Three cops were on their knees facing it, though they were scrambling back up in response to the sudden entrance. All around them, piles of stuff were scattered, some reinforced with the remnants of a torn-up cage from the front of the room, and others occupying overturned shelving.

The dragon choked down a last mouthful and looked up at them with a wide eyed glassy stare, as the police got to their feet and the balding older one proclaimed, “Witness the majesty of Vendoat the Gold! Submit to her magnificence and offer all you value, for a 200 percent return in no more than twelve weeks!” He smiled triumphantly, confident in both their obedience and his master’s investment plan.

“No no no!” The voice of the dragon was eerily high for a creature so large, almost like a screech. “They’re all clouded! All wrong! I’ll eat the short one live instead, her worth is great!” The police were surprised by this turn of events and fumbled for their guns, while the dragon leapt into melee with Buffy and Harmony, strangely graceful despite its clumsy appearance.

Harmony quickly grabbed out for a wing that seemed like it was just flailing, but it whipped quickly and knocked her to the side. For her part, Buffy had to dive out of the path of the dragon’s snapping jaws, drawing her sword in midair and parrying back a swiping claw as she landed.

“Of all the adjectives you could’ve used, it had to be short, huh?” Buffy said as she rolled back out of range and back up to a standing position. The dragon pressed the attack on her without responding, making deliberate, powerful attacks with her claws and teeth. Buffy was able to stay out of the way of some of the attacks and use her sword to knock back those she couldn’t dodge, but the scales were as strong as advertised, and even in the heavy exchanges her sword was barely leaving scratches.

Meanwhile, Harmony had been distracted by the cops, who decided to direct their fire on her. She wasn’t as good at dodging as Buffy was and took a few bullets, but none of them seemed to hit anywhere too important and her first charge landed, pushing one back and slamming him hard into the wall. Harmony grabbed another by the shoulders and looked like she was about to sink her fangs into him, but after Buffy’s warning shout of “Harmony!” she changed her course and just headbutted him instead.

The distraction cost Buffy, as the dragon caught her in the head with a wing attack using the superior reach of the appendage. She tripped backward over one of the haphazard piles of boxes and fell back to the ground, dropping her sword as she fell. She scrambled back from the pile as the dragon just burst through it, screaming “Feed me your futures! Compound my value!” Baggies of drugs and pieces of a stereo were knocked to the side in the dragon’s wake.

The dragon wasn’t her only problem either; more police were arriving in the room, either led by the one they encountered in the hall or drawn by the commotion. All the cover and the dragon herself meant they couldn’t get off more than a few potshots at Buffy, but Harmony was starting to have a hard time of it.

Buffy decided the momentum in the fight had to change, and sprung to her feet charging right at the cops. Their surprise bought her key seconds, and quickly she was amongst the crowd at the door. She lashed out around her to thin their numbers, and then retreated back behind the cover of some crumpled shelving as the dragon barrelled in behind her. The dragon was hungry and her pursuit barely controlled; she trampled some more hapless policemen on her way to get to Buffy.

Buffy reached Harmony just as she knocked out the last of the men she was facing with a dangerous-looking blow to the head (at least it wasn’t a bite), and both of them turned to face Vendoat’s assault. Harmony fared a little better this time, getting inside the dragon’s guard and angling to bite at her long neck, but Buffy was still having trouble doing significant damage, especially without her sword. It’d been a long time since she’d traded blows with something that was physically stronger than her, but the dragon definitely qualified, and was armored to boot. She bruised up one of the wings a bit with a whirling kick, but paid for it as the dragon finally caught Harmony in her claws and threw her at Buffy, bowling them both over towards the back of the room.

As they tried to get up in a tangle of limbs, Vendoat seemed to have finally had enough. “Burn sunk costs!” she chanted maniacally, as she reared back and then breathed a cone of fire at the two of them. Buffy threw Harmony to the side in a panic, using the momentum to propel herself backwards, and both of them narrowly escaped the fire. The cardboard boxes against the wall lit off and started burning merrily, and the sprinkler system started spraying water all over the room.

Buffy leaned on her elbow and was about to get up, but a hand surprised her from behind, tearing her improvised assembly of sunglasses and hair bands off her head. Chief Monroe taunted her, “Kids these days, always wearing all sorts of stupid things.”

“You have the nerve to say that with a novelty tie?” Buffy backhanded him frustratedly, sending him to dreamland. She pawed through the wet mess on the floor looking for her eye protection, but unfortunately the dragon had seen the exchange, and was on Buffy in a flash.

A vicious blow to her side spun Buffy around, and the dragon’s other claw came down hard on her chest, pinning her. Buffy tried to look away, but Vendoat’s sinuous neck let her put her big glittering eyes at just the wrong angle, and for a long, stretching moment, Buffy was lost.

Images of shopping sprees and island vacations flashed through Buffy’s mind, seeing herself stride along loaded down with all the shiny weapons and intact lightbulbs she could carry. Her grip on reality started to do a 180, but before it could quite get itself around, there was a sudden silence.

The heat of the sun seemed to bake through the chill of the sprinklers, and the feeling of gritty desert sand replaced the wet dust on her palms. While the images she’d seen before had been like a children’s cartoon, everything about these new feelings was so real it ached, blaring out reality with their glare instead of trying to cover it up. She knew the sun and she knew the shadow.

There was another voice in her head, and it was both her own and not. As loud as the end of the world, it screamed a single word in defiance, exploding the alien thoughts of the dragon out of her mind completely.


	15. S3.5E3: Thin Gold Line V

**[X] KILL**

With the sound of the Word, The heat of the desert sun faded away, the shadows retreating with it, and reality came rushing back into focus. In fact, things were somehow a whole lot clearer now.

“Audit! Audit! Audit!” The dragon was whining in her high whiny voice, bouncing her goofy looking head back and forth on her long flexible neck. She still held Buffy down with one heavy claw, the points cutting through her clothing and drawing blood. The dragon’s comparatively narrow wrist was exposed and undefended though, left out of position with the rest of her body.

“Will you just shut up already?” Buffy grabbed at the wrist with both hands, wrenching in in just the right way to cause maximum harm, and the dragon’s whine turned into a scream. The pressure let up, and Buffy slipped herself under the claw and inside the dragon’s reach, following up by launching a full body kick upwards into her chin. She finished a backflip with the momentum and landed on her feet. Vendoat tried to attack with her wings again, but Buffy had anticipated it and was already moving.

The strange grace the dragon had seemed to have before was really just Buffy’s inexperience fighting something with her body plan. But a part of her remembered now, remembered what it was to fight something this size, with four claws and two wings and a nasty bite with fire breath. Buffy could see all the flaws in the monster’s haphazard style now; for all her physical power, she was really just a newborn. She’d never been in a serious fight before, getting by on a well defended nest and mind controlled cops.

Those cops weren’t much help to Vendoat now though. The room was littered with unconscious or badly injured officers, and most of those who had gotten through the battle mostly intact seemed to have fled the room, either because of Harmony’s efforts or the dragon’s weakening control. A couple were still trying to take potshots at Buffy from around the door, but their narrow angles let her use the dragon herself as cover. They could’ve ‘safely’ kept shooting, since their small caliber bullets would never penetrate Vendoat’s scales, but they didn’t know that, so their fire was stifled.

For her part, Harmony seemed to have learned from her failed melee encounters with the dragon, and was just throwing random things at it from across the room. None of it was heavy or sharp enough to do real damage with Harmony’s poor technique, but Vendoat was showing her inexperience again and paid the projectiles some mind, leaving Buffy more openings. She couldn’t really afford to be leaving Buffy any.

The slayer’s hits were telling now. She wasn’t any stronger or faster than she had been, but she instinctively knew how to strike, where to hurt. She could punish vulnerable areas, hit where it mattered despite the armor. This wasn’t like her past surges of resolved power fighting the Master or Angelus; she didn’t feel invincible. The dragon just seemed clumsy, inefficient, pathetic. Just a child really, if a dangerous one.

Vendoat was getting desperate, and made another mistake. She reared back for another breath attack, but it was too slow a weapon for such a young dragon to use in melee like this. Buffy darted forward and punched her hard in the throat, making her gurgle on her own fumes for a second. While she was disoriented, Buffy grabbed her by the nose and violently pulled down, jarring her head even as she flipped herself over it, narrowly grazing the low ceiling and getting her hair soaked by a near pass with the sprinkler.

She landed in a three point stance, whipping her hair to splash the water out at the cop who now had a clear line of sight to shoot her. The momentary distraction was all she needed to grab her sword back into her hand from the soaked pile of contraband on the floor, and then she was on the move again. Best to end this quickly, before anything else could go wrong.

She engaged the dragon once more, ignoring the half-blind gunshots ringing out to either side of her. Harmony’s thrown stereo speaker made Vendoat raise a wing to deflect it, and Buffy punished her for the error by stabbing at the sensitive point just between bone spurs. “Who even taught you about ponzi schemes? Do dragons just know that out of the shell these days?”

The dragon’s only answer was a shrill scream, as she pivoted her injured wing away and came at her with her opposite claw. Buffy had seen it coming, and stabbed out, targeting the vulnerable wrist again, as if she’d done it a hundred times before. Her sword struck home, grinding against bone nastily and getting soaked in dragonblood. The mundane steel wouldn’t tolerate that kind of treatment for long, but Buffy didn’t need much longer to win at all.

Injured on one side and still smarting on the other, Vendoat leaned in for a savage bite, but Buffy flowed around the motion, ending up with her legs draped over the dragon’s shoulders. She panicked, and tried to shake her off, but the abrupt move left her eye exposed at just the wrong angle.

Buffy jammed the sword home, directly into the iris and forcing the way through the narrow slot in the skull for the optical nerve. The sword’s hilt went in up to the eyeball, and the dragon dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Vendoat the Gold was dead, and Buffy landed smartly astride the corpse. The gunshots had stopped, and the room was quiet but for the sprinkler system and the smouldering remains of the fire.

“Are you done?” Buffy shouted at the door. “Or am I going to have to arrest every cop in this station myself?” A couple bedraggled police slowly came into view after that, hands in the air. Buffy just sighed.

* * *

“So you’re saying that you just happened to bring the dragon egg in as suspicious evidence when investigating Wilkins’ ‘disappearance’.” Buffy made some air quotes for that obfuscation. “And then it immediately hatched, and you were all mind controlled for the past week into rifling through the town for valuables to feed to the walking talking investment scam.” She had Chief Monroe in the interrogation room, and he was being just as slippery as Vanessa had predicted.

“A likely story,” Xander snarked. “Sure, Buffy killed a dragon here, but how do we know you weren’t already looting the town to the bedrock before you all got mind-whammied? I’m sure Wilkins didn’t leave out his dragon egg to just be picked up in the first place you looked.” Xander had had his forming city watch ready to come in and secure all the compromised police after Buffy made them surrender. He had a couple people watching them in holding cells now.

Monroe cringed, leaning back and raising his hands as if to ward off their skepticism. “I know this looks bad, and that some of you in this room may have grudges against me for what happened in the past.” He didn’t just look at Buffy there, but Vanessa too. “But what could I do? I know about the sort of fishy stuff that goes on in this town, but the mayor gave his marching orders and I followed! If I tried to defy his wishes I would’ve ended up just as dead as the Deputy Mayor did when he turned against Wilkins.”

Buffy and Xander were a little flummoxed by this misunderstanding, but Vanessa didn’t know enough about Faith’s story to be confused and tore into her old rival, “You went above and beyond any vileness he required of you. I know that before you were around the police at least occasionally tried to save people; how much did the change have to do with your policy of not responding to ‘animal attacks’?”

Monroe responded indignantly, “Our officers weren’t prepared for that! The mayor wouldn’t let me equip them properly for it, and even if he did we could’ve gotten in even more hot water if we’d ever stepped into his way by accident. What do you think would happen to one of my cops if they killed one of his vampires?”

“And what about your rampant corruption then?” Vanessa said triumphantly, “I’ve got evidence that your sponging of this city reaches back far longer than this past week. You were only allowed to get away with it so long because you’ve always been the mayor’s lapdog.”

“Everything we’ve done here has been in-bounds,” the chief argued. “I know you liberal types don’t like civil forfeiture or ticket collections, but those are entirely legal, that’s how the government is supposed to operate in this country.”

“So are you some paragon of law and order or are you just another helpless victim?” Buffy asked sarcastically. “You can try to hide behind the old mayor’s grave all you like, but the fact remains that you’ve been a bad police chief for everyone here. Do you know how much harder you’ve made my job for the past three years? Not even just by inaction! A year ago I had police shooting at me when I was trying to save the world from getting sucked into hell. I’m pretty sure not even Wilkins was on board with that.”

“You can blame Snyder for that particular fuck-up,” Monroe said. “He apparently heard a ruckus in the library and ordered some cops in against procedure. You’ve been complaining about how we don’t interfere with vampires, and that’s a great example of how things can go wrong when we do. Besides, it’s not like we pursued the case against you for more than a couple days. Once I got wind of how that happened I shut it right down.”

“As I remember it Giles was the one who got you to cool your jets,” Xander said. “He’s probably outside by now along with everyone else, we could go ask him.”

“And him coming in was how I read between the lines,” Monroe said. “Do you expect me to be psychic? Or maybe I should drop murder cases whenever the perp says she didn’t do it?”

“Urgh.” Buffy had the urge to hit the interrogation table, but the city could ill-afford to pay for a new table. “Come on guys, we aren’t going to get any more out of him. Let him stew in here while we figure out what to do with this mess.” She walked out, and Xander and Vanessa followed her lead. Monroe just sat there with a righteous look on his face.

Buffy leaned against the wall outside with a pensive expression. “I don’t know what to do. I kind of just want to tear down the whole corrupt organization here and put you in charge Xander. Maybe this could merge into that city watch thing you wanted to make with the ‘99ers?”

Xander was a little floored at the suggestion for a second, but managed to reply, “I’m a little young to be chief of police, Buffy. Short of experience too, and I’m not even the one among us who scored ‘Law Enforcement’ at the career fair.”

“I’m a little young to be mayor Xander,” Buffy said. “You probably have more relevant experience for this than I do for mayoring.”

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it. There’d be a lot of friction though. Not just about me, but between the kids and the cops in general, if we got all mergey with the togetherness.” Xander hesitated. “You know how much I hate to be a responsible adult, but maybe the best option is to mostly leave things alone? Chief Monroe is a corrupt coward, but he might be your corrupt coward now. Anyone who saw what you did to that dragon would be a little afraid of you.”

“I might have a middle way,” Vanessa said. “My nephew grew up in Sunnydale, and he’s an actually respectable police detective in San Francisco now, as opposed to the scum like Monroe we have here. He isn’t terribly experienced with the night life here, but he knows enough to not be surprised, and we could read him in for the job. The officers might be a little less … resentful, at someone being brought in with some years in a uniform already.”

Buffy still wasn’t sure. On the one hand, she could trust Xander absolutely, and a unified force for keeping the town safe would probably be more efficient. On the other, it seemed a little tyrannical of her to dispose the police chief only to replace him with one of her best friends. The police had been solidly beaten by her today, and she was pretty sure they would mostly stay in line both due to fear and guilt whatever she did. But was that really how she wanted to run things? Who was she going to make the new police chief?


	16. S3.5E4: The Triumvirate I

**[X] Vanessa’s nephew is probably the best choice. Buffy knows the least about him, but he’s likely to be safe enough without getting the cops too demoralized. Plus, anyone Vanessa thinks is good for the job is probably reliable, right?**

**Previously, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:**

_INT. SCHOOL HALL - DAY_

_BUFFY: So, what's on tap tonight that's so important? Uprising? Prophesied ritual? Preordained death-fest?_

_XANDER: Ah, the old standards._

_GILES: A transport vehicle is delivering a supply of blood to the hospital._

_BUFFY: Aha. Vampire meals-on-wheels._

_GILES: Well, hopefully not. We should meet in front of the hospital at 8:30 sharp. I'll bring the weaponry._

_BUFFY: And I'll bring the party mix._

* * *

_INT. BUFFY'S ROOM - AFTERNOON - DAY_

_JOYCE: How about some soup? Chicken and stars?_

_BUFFY: Mom. Stop it. Come sit with me._

_JOYCE: Well... I've got... laundry..._

_BUFFY: Why are you..._

_Buffy gasps._

_BUFFY: You had sex with Giles. You had sex with Giles!_

_Joyce is heading for the door._

_JOYCE: It was the candy! We were teenagers!_

_BUFFY: On the hood of a police car?!_

_JOYCE: I'll be downstairs! Feel better!_

_Joyce exits._

_BUFFY: (called after) Twice?!_

* * *

_INT. CITY HALL - UPSTAIRS - DAY_

_Digby charges in with five minions._

_DIGBY: This will never be your town, Slayer!_

_BUFFY: I like to think of it as our town, really, but we can agree to disagree._

* * *

_INT. CITY HALL - CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY_

_JONATHAN: I’ve spread the word to all the ‘99ers that we’ve taken over the city, and that we need people to help run it. The response has been pretty positive, at least short term, since most people weren’t really doing anything this summer._

_XANDER: So we’ll be able to staff the hotline and the watch network?_

_PERCY: I got that. Never could trust the cops around here anyway._

_VANESSA: (smirking) They’ve never been a very inspiring police force._

* * *

_INT CITY HALL - CLEAN ROOM - DAY_

_HARMONY: I guess that makes sense. So, now that I’m all muzzled, you said something about a mansion?_

_BUFFY: Xander wants to make Crawford street into some kind of base, but it could probably use someone to keep the squatters out. Nonlethally. It has all the vampire accommodations one might desire, helpfully set up by its former occupant. (smiles evilly)_

_WILLOW: Who actually owns that place anyway? (dustbins mirror fragments)_

_BUFFY: We do. It turns out that when you don’t pay property taxes for a bajillion years, your house is not yours anymore._

* * *

_INT. POLICE DEPT - HALL - NIGHT_

_XANDER: You know how much I hate to be a responsible adult, but maybe the best option is to mostly leave things alone? Chief Monroe is a corrupt coward, but he might be your corrupt coward now. Anyone who saw what you did to that dragon would be a little afraid of you._

_VANESSA: I might have a middle way. My nephew grew up in Sunnydale, and he’s an actually respectable police detective in San Francisco now, as opposed to the scum like Monroe we have here. He isn’t terribly experienced with the night life here, but he knows enough to not be surprised, and we could read him in for the job._

* * *

**S3.5E4: The Triumvirate**

“So you say you had some kind of vision in response to the dragon’s charm?” Giles asked. “Was it like a slayer dream?” He twirled his staff and then came at Buffy with a powerful series of overhand swings, following through with the momentum of the staff to make each at a slightly different trajectory.

“Would be the first one I ever had when I was awake,” Buffy was limiting herself to pure dodging in this exercise, and managed to waltz through Giles’ attacks even while staying in arms reach of him. “Also kind of shorter and creepier than usual.” It had been a few days before she’d been able to get a training session in with Giles; between their two busy schedules and the need for a new location things had kept getting delayed.

Despite its many conveniences, City Hall didn’t really have an area for proper training, but Xander’s renovations at the Crawford Street Mansion had been moving along well and his Sunnydale City Watch (or ‘SDCW!’, as he would say) now had the building fully occupied. Buffy had even led the new recruits in some exercises here earlier this week, but this was strictly a slayer/watcher session. Buffy had been a little reluctant to discuss the vision with anyone else; they all had enough going on without getting weirded out by her latest freaky thing.

“I can’t say I can think of any records of such a thing. You’ve resisted hypnosis by The Master and Drusilla in the past, did it feel like that?” Giles had switched up his tactics now, and was coming at her with rapid jabs using the end of the staff, as if it was a spear.

“Vendoat was definitely way better than them at it. Like comparing a dancing bear to a scaly ballerina, she had a whole Saturday morning special’s worth of Buffy temptations packed in there.” Buffy avoided the strikes by strafing around him now, though she had to reverse direction once when he stabbed out with the staff’s back end. “Plus, even when … a vampire gets someone with Hypnosis, they just sort of freeze up right? She had the whole mind control dealy going on, it didn’t really wear off of the victims until after she was dead.”

“Yes, the effect isn’t generally thought of as the same, but it was the best analogy to it that we’ve faced in the past.” Giles paused in his assault. “We really ought to get some real eye protection in case there are any other dragons waiting in the wings for us.”

“Already covered,” Buffy said. “We returned what was left of the illegally seized evidence to the victims, but some of the hoard was just from old Wilkins stashes the police found. Protective goggles were the first thing on the equipment list we ordered with the proceeds.”

“I do hope you didn’t sell anything too dangerous.” Giles cleaned his glasses worriedly. “I realize the budget is rather strict right now, but-”

Buffy interrupted him, “Don’t worry, I don’t think all our magic people would let us. You should have seen the way Amy was fawning over some of that stuff the other day. He had some tasty liquid assets too, we spent some of those.”

“Yes, of course.” Giles went back into a fighting stance. “I should know you have good sense by now. In any case, what were the contents of this protective vision?”

Buffy hesitated. This part definitely made her sound a little psycho-girl, which was part of why she didn’t really want to share with the rest of her friends. “I was in this desert, or maybe like a savannah.” She couldn’t quite manage to tell the whole truth about the next part. “This voice told me to KILL. Definite capital letters, no compromises of any kind.” After all, it sort of might not have been her voice anyway.

“Interesting,” Giles seemed even more intrigued than he had been before. “The slayer is said to originate from a primal force of some kind, and the records are sparse but it’s thought that the first slayer was called in Africa.” He noticed her troubled expression. “I wouldn’t worry overmuch about the content, Buffy. Such forces often lack subtlety and live in the moment. It’s possible that it simply recognized the danger you were in and interceded as best it knew how. It’s not as if there were any permanent effects.” He started attacking with the staff again, noticing that they’d let their pace lag.

Buffy jumped up in response, landing with a fraction of her weight on the staff to disrupt Giles grip, then flipping over his head and behind him and catch the staff as he fumbled it. He stuttered a bit, surprised, before turning to face her again. “That’s the thing, Giles. There kind of were.”

She fiddled with the staff for a bit before continuing. “I’m not faster or stronger or tougher or anything. But it’s like I know more about the fighty arts now. All my Slayer combat instincts got turned up to 11. All kinds of moves and tricks I’ve never done in HD-movie clarity.”

“You do seem to be in exceptionally good form today,” he said. “I suppose this rush of insight assisted you against the dragon? It was already quite large for its age.”

“Especially the dragon. The difference isn’t as big fighting vampires, and other stuff I’m already used to,” she said. She’d managed a few patrols in the past week, and there had actually been a couple fledglings to fight; the summer doldrums hadn’t fully set in yet, apparently. “But it was suddenly like I’d already fought lots of dragons before, when I was fighting it.” She made a face. “It helped a lot with the gunfire too. I really hope being mayor isn’t going to involve me getting shot at all the time.”

“I should hope not,” Giles replied. “This new chief of police Ms. Waters found seemed agreeable?”

“I’d say he was a little young for the job, but,” Buffy gestured at herself. “He didn’t dismiss me or the darker side of things in town at least, but we agreed he needed to get the police back in shape for normal police work before graduating to vampires. They’ll forward those kinds of things to Xander’s SDCW Hotline for now, and plus, we’ve got these handy walkie talkies now anyways.” Buffy took hers off her belt and waved it in example. “You’re carrying yours, right Giles?”

Plans for a full merger of supernatural and mundane policing hadn’t materialized, but thanks to surplus police radios and a little of Willow’s transistor-magic all the friendly forces of the town could at least talk to each other now. There were relays at a bunch of their buildings, like City Hall and Crawford street, and Willow had even said it should be hard to listen in without an authorized radio.

He cringed a bit. “Ah, yes, that device.” He eyed his, which apparently he’d left in the corner for the training session. “It always seems to make such a racket at the worst times.”

“You know it has channel settings right? You could just leave it quiet except for APBs.” Buffy said, with a smile on her face.

Giles blanched, and changed the subject. “Ah. In any case, while changes to your powers are concerning, I don’t think we have very much to go on yet, and the nature of them seems far less alien than your experience earlier this year. I’ll consult with the appropriate journals and books, of course, in case there’s anything that sheds insight, and you should tell me if there are any more waking visions or noticeable effects.”

“Thanks, Giles.” Buffy said. It felt good to get it off her chest, and she was less worried about it now that she’d told him. “There hasn’t been any new weird stuff since Sunday, so I think it’s definitely more stable than the psychic Buffy extravaganza was.”

They resumed training after that, and Buffy had some fun testing out some acrobatic tricks with the blocky stonework that made up the mansion walls. The floor had been padded, but that was more for others’ benefit; she was too tough to bruise or cut just from falling wrong, at least from any reasonable height. She was trying to integrate some of her new knowledge into a more aerial style of combat, and Giles threw tennis balls at her while she dodged, trying to avoid touching the floor.

Giles wasn’t proving as dab a hand at the tennis ball as he was with his staff, so Buffy was feeling more relaxed in this part of the session. “So my watcher, what do you have planned for the night? Books? Museum catalogues?” Buffy struggled to think of a third Gilesy thing, “More books?”

“Oh, I’d thought your mother told you,” Giles said casually. “She invited me over for dinner tonight.” His next tennis ball beaned Buffy in the forehead, and she clumsily tumbled to the mat.

* * *

Dinner didn’t end up being as traumatizing as Buffy had expected. It was worse.

Giles and Mom weren’t like … flirty in front of her or anything. But they talked. You’d think they would talk about things they had in common, like ancient artifacts and old bands. Instead, they talked about the other thing they had in common, which was Buffy.

“Wait, that’s why her hair was pink for a week? I thought she was just having a phase,” Joyce was stifling a laugh, and Buffy just hung her head. The regrettable pixie incident was something she’d wanted to never remember again.

Giles went on, because if he was going to tell the terrible story she knew he’d say the terrible line, “That’s why they always said back in the academy: ‘Two pixies in hand and your hair is a bush!’ I tried to warn her, but you know Buffy, always gallivanting off to the next challenge.”

She picked at her meal, trying to drown her sorrows with tasty rice pilaf. But even a dinner that mom had spent actual effort on couldn’t save her from this embarrassment singularity.

“Ever since she was tiny!” Joyce agreed. “She would put on this old blanket like a cape and run around screaming ‘Power Girl to the rescue!’ I was frightened by a mouse once and she beaned it with a pillow!” Giles couldn’t stifle a little Englishman giggle at that, and then her mom unleashed the dread weapon. “I even have old pictures! I should get them out after dinner.” She was doomed.

He definitely wasn’t going to let something like that go. It would dog her forever now. “Well, you have been trying to look a little more professional lately Buffy. Maybe a cape would be-” Buffy got a stay of execution though, when her radio activated. She heard Giles’ buzzing over in the next room too.

“Attention all units, this is an emergency, 10-19! Vamps at the police station, there’s a whole mob attacking! Request reinforcements from SDCW and other friendlies! Repeat 10-19!” The sound of gunfire and smashing windows was heard in the background before the radio cut off.

With this dire news, Buffy launched into action, thoughts of the embarrassing dinner forgotten. Giles was getting out his keys, and Buffy frowned. “Giles, your car is too slow. Mom, can we borrow yours?”

“Are you sure Buffy?” Joyce hedged, “This sounds so dangerous. I mean, surely the police-”

“Are totally unable to defend themselves, especially since Matt had to fire some of them when he came in.” Most of the force had stayed on, but between that and those that left town or went missing right after Wilkins died they were still depleted. And they hadn’t been focusing on tooling up to fight vampires yet either.

“She’s right.” Giles confirmed. “I believe the old mayor’s influence kept them insulated from a direct attack of this scale, but clearly things have changed.”

Joyce sighed in defeat, knowing her daughter was right, and Buffy snatched the keys out of her hand as soon as they were presented and started shuffling Giles out the door with her. He made a quick stop to get a crossbow out of his trunk, but was confused when he saw Buffy pulling up in the driver’s seat of the jeep. “Ah, Buffy, do you even have your driver’s license yet?”

“This girl has no time for tests anymore.” Buffy shook her head. “But I don’t think the police are going to arrest me when I’m on my way to save them, and my reflexes are faster than yours. We need to be there yesterday, get in.”

Giles conceded, but made very sure to buckle his seatbelt, a task Buffy hadn’t bothered with. She took off before he was done, and they were roaring towards downtown. They’d only gone a couple blocks though, before Buffy’s radio came on again. “Umm, is this working? This is Laura Egler, I’m at the hospital and these guys are robbing it.”

Buffy grabbed out her radio and started driving one handed, not slowing down in the least. “What guys? Like, guys people or guys vampires?”

“Buffy!” Giles shouted, and Buffy swerved to avoid another driver as she took a corner hard. She went back to her conversation and Giles’ grip on his seat tightened.

Laura’s voice continued over the radio “I think they’re all vampires, and there’s this one shark guy. He’s got this big speech he’s making now but I think they’re after all the blood.”

“The police station thing must be a diversion,” Buffy said. “Attract all our attention to fight there, and then make off with all the blood from the hospital.”

“That might still be the most dangerous battle,” Giles said, with his attention still half on the road. “They would know the police were at least armed, if not appropriately, so that’s likely the larger force.”

“If things go wrong at the hospital though…” Buffy trailed off. It could be a massacre with all the invalids there.


	17. S3.5E4: The Triumvirate II

**[X] Buffy and Giles go to the police station, redirecting enough other ‘99ers to prevent a disaster at the hospital.**

Buffy had heard the fight over the radio, and the grim facts were that if she didn’t get to the police station to turn the battle right away, there might not be any police left for the ‘99ers to save. She had to hope the situation at the hospital wouldn’t escalate beyond a simple robbery, or if it did that it would at least take long enough for the reinforcements to arrive in force.

Despite the terrible situation, Buffy felt truly at home on the road. There was none of the uncertainty from following all the annoying traffic laws like speed limits and right-of-way; Buffy just trusted her speed and her instincts as she wove her way through all obstacles. Giles was looking more than a little green to the side of her, but she felt sure she could get them to the station in one piece. Maybe there was a little extra something from the Slayer helping her drive this time, or maybe she was just more self assured than she had been behind the wheel a few months ago.

Thankfully, traffic wasn’t too intense this late on a summer night, but Buffy still had to do some unconventional driving to keep her head of speed. More than a few sidewalks were coasted over, and at least one mailbox paid the price for her haste, but her mom’s jeep was sturdy and took the incidental damage well. At one point she passed a motorcyclist and was regretful she didn’t have one of her own to use, but the budget wasn’t a fairy tale, and even the not-totally-meagre salary she was getting herself wouldn’t buy her a motorcycle without a lot of saving.

The police station looked rough on arrival, with most of the windows smashed or shot out and the police cars parked in front of the building beat up, but the fight had apparently moved indoors. She spun the jeep around into a skid, finally stopping when it smacked into the side of the large front steps, and she was out in a flash before it even settled down. Giles was experienced enough to be fine on his own behind her, and she had a feeling seconds would count.

The ground floor was a wreck with casualties from both sides, but the battle had moved on. A few vampires were on the ground, struggling through the physical effects of being kneecapped, and a couple cops were either unconscious, or more likely dead. She staked one vamp that had been actively drinking from a body in the back as she passed, but left the rest of them for Giles to clean up. Maybe she should have pushed harder to bring the cops totally into the fold, but she’d been worried about the blowback against a teenager like Xander just being appointed over them. She didn’t see Matt Rivers among the dead, so maybe he could learn from this at least. He’d seemed like a good cop when she’d interviewed him.

She was drawn to a stairway by the sounds of destruction, and saw a cohort of vampires trying to break down the door on the lower level. At least it seemed like the police had pulled off a strategic retreat. Leaping down from above, she put today’s earlier aerial training to use with the unexpected ambush. She landed among them, staking one on the way down, knocking another down with brute strength, and dazing a third with a brutal kick to the head. Before the rest recovered, she was on the upper level again, and they fumbled around for critical seconds before her second attack.

Another couple were dusted as she fell on them again, and then they scattered back upstairs, clearly panicked. Fledglings, the lot of them, if she didn’t miss her guess. Someone had been recruiting. She was about to chase the stragglers upstairs to finish the job, but the door swung open revealing a wide-eyed policeman who was waving her in.

Even as she passed through the battered door, he said, “They broke through on the other side, we can’t-”

“I can.” And she was gone, off in the direction he indicated, hearing a new volley of gunfire. She noticed the cognitive dissonance of cops actually being on her side for once, but the bizarre feeling was quickly swept away by the next fight.

A knot of cops was firing around the corner ahead of her, but even as she approached she saw more vampires charge into them, ignoring the pistol rounds. The police force started to melt in the melee, but Buffy reached it quickly enough and once again she was a dusty whirlwind of violence. She was pretty sure she recognized a couple of the cops in this group as ones that had been shooting her on Sunday, and wondered if fighting Harmony had been any use as training for this.

This group of vampires was a little more disciplined. There wasn’t a master among them, but a lot of them seemed to be more experienced minions, and her mostly heedless attack into their center had exposed her to a couple hits. The police were actually supporting her pretty well with their guns though, and the good fire discipline that had been useless on Vendoat’s side before was a boon to her, since she had more to fear from the bullets than the vampires did.

This really was a pretty huge concentration of minions, especially considering there were supposedly even more attacking the hospital. She supposed quantity could make up for quality in some ways, but in a pitched fight against her there was only so much they could do. Just as she’d been thinking how lucky she was that none of them had been smart enough to steal some guns though, bullets started shooting in at her from down the hall, and she was scored across the shoulder before she could get back into the rhythm of dodging around easy firing arcs.

Sheer numbers only lasted so long, and after a couple minutes the air was thick with vampire dust and Buffy was charging now, going after the enterprising shooters that had been hanging back. These were probably the older and smarter ones, so Buffy was prepared for trickery. Sure enough, when she turned the next corner to reach them they were gone.

She quickly scanned the hallway looking for clues, and got a hunch when her gaze passed over the door to a certain storeroom. The secret way in had been securely barred, but it was still an escape hatch. If these were the same crony vamps from City Hall before, it wouldn’t surprise her at all if they knew about it. She worried for a moment about leaving the station behind, but the brunt of the attack was broken, and she was sure the cops and reinforcements could clean up from here. She had to deal with the root of this problem and deal with it now.

Buffy was careful entering the storeroom, but she wasn’t greeted by any gunfire. Instead, just as she’d predicted, the barred secret entryway had been opened up, and the shooter vamps had doubtless fled into the sewers. She moved to follow, swinging the heavy trick wall open, but this time she was sure there’d be an ambush. She waited a handful of seconds to catch them off guard, and then leaped through the opening arcing her body high, almost scraping the ceiling.

The suit-wearing vampire at the other end of the small tunnel was no crack shot, and her unexpected altitude ruined his aim. Her thrown stake didn’t connect either, but it spooked him enough to give her time to kick off the opposite wall and cascade into his position. He was no match for her in melee, but another of the vamps had been down the main tunnel waiting for just such an event. Buffy didn’t have time to dodge the shot well enough and it took a little piece off the edge of her left forearm.

“Why is everyone suddenly shooting at me this week?” Buffy asked. The vamp she tangled with didn’t respond, but his focus didn’t save him; a strike to the heart later and he was dusty. The second unwisely tried to capitalize on her injury, but with no more distractions or surprises he didn’t stand a chance of hitting her as she barrelled into him, and he didn’t last past the first exchange of blows.

“I mean, is it because I’m the mayor now? Do people think it’s OK to shoot at me just because I’m a political figure?” she opined to the empty tunnel. Still no leader minion guy, though those were probably those two friends of his that had gotten away the first time. Buffy was more than a little beaten up at this point, and bleeding from about one and a half minor gunshot wounds, but she was also very pissed. He couldn’t have gotten far yet, but Buffy didn’t know which way he went.

She was about to go down in the direction the second suited vamp had been guarding, but this minion had already proven he was just the kind of idiot who thought he was clever. She turned, and started sprinting the other way. She wasn’t making much of an effort at caution or stealth anymore, partly because she was so angry, and partly because one minion with a gun just wasn’t a threat to her anymore, even as injured and weary as she was.

**< KILL> **

Her instincts told her to jerk to the side and duck her head as she turned the next corner, and it was enough to foul her quarry’s shot. “Predictable Diddy,” she called out mockingly. “Old Wilkins probably didn’t ever give you very difficult tasks. Unfortunately, in the real world, minions like you just sort of don’t matter.” Privately, Buffy wished he hadn’t shown so much initiative, but this was likely to put him off his game.

“It’s DIGBY! I’m DIGBY VAN DYNE, the first consul of the Triumvirate!” he shouted, futilely emptying his clip as she blitzed him. She knocked the gun out of his hand like a cat slapping at a mouse, and when he tried to bite at her, her other fist smashed into his nose so hard she heard his skull crack a little. She grabbed out another stake as was about to finish the job when he cried “Wait!” in a half-intelligible gargle.

** <KILL> **

Buffy jammed the stake home, ignoring his plea. Almost looking confused, he squeezed out a “But your-” and then turned to dust. Buffy was a bit disquieted, but then again, Digby was a talker. He probably just had some other stupid boast about a made up thing or an annoying ploy. Conversely, part of her wanted to exult in her victories, but they were just a couple stupid minions, and this was a dank sewer. The police station was still maybe in danger too. So she regretfully tore off a piece of her shirt, tied it around her arm to stop most of the bleeding, and booked it right back to the secret passage.

* * *

They didn’t end up needing her help. Percy and a small force of other ‘99ers had arrived just as Giles was mopping up crippled vamps on the top floor, and between them they had dealt with the panicking fledglings and helped the cops clean up on the lower floor. All told, the losses were severe, but could’ve been a lot worse. Five cops dead, and twice as many injured, traded off against dozens and dozens of dusted vampires.

Buffy had thought the looks she got from them afterward would be vindictive, for bringing this down on them and not keeping them safe, but that wasn’t the vibe she got at all. The police were subdued, but the edge of fear that had been in their glances before was now replaced mostly with respect.

Matt Waters, the new police chief brought in from San Francisco (and Vanessa’s nephew) was among the injured, but the bite on his neck wasn’t that bad and he’d already gotten it covered up with some bandages. Buffy wondered if he needed some blood, but the hospital wasn’t the best place for that now. Xander had called in over the radio a few minutes ago and reported that the SDCW had at least chased the shark demon and his forces away before any patients were hurt, but that the blood supply was mostly robbed and the hospital was kind of in chaos.

Matt seemed to be looking for words as she stood there taking in the scene, and finally came up with some. “I knew, before, when I was younger, but…” He paused, long, about a minute. “I didn’t know. Not really. You know?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said. “I get that a lot.”

“I guess you can try to put the dark off, but it doesn’t wait for you if you do. We’ll, we’ll get on that. That Harris guy wouldn’t mind some crosstraining with the department?” He asked carefully.

“You’ve got a radio,” Buffy said. “Maybe you should talk to him yourself. But he’s not going to say no.”

Matt nodded, looking sober. Buffy didn’t really blame him for this, despite how he’d been more conservative about things coming in. People had tried to be vigilant, but this wasn’t the sort of thing they’d seen coming. She hadn’t seen it either, so maybe she was more to blame than anyone.

“Buffy, you’re hurt,” Giles said. “Let me wrap those up properly.” He’d been playing the part of a field medic in the station already and looked guilty that he hadn’t noticed the severity of her condition earlier, but Buffy really didn’t think it was that bad. As he administered to her wounds, she pulled out her radio to call Mom, to let her know things were basically OK and that they’d be home at a reasonable hour.

Normal police radios weren’t all about the private calls, but whatever Willow did with the relays let them work on these. She’d said something about resonances and antinodes that made Buffy think it was more science than magic, but all that was important was that she could click in a specific sequence and talk directly to her Mom. It was almost like being a rich girl with a real cellphone, though of course she couldn’t call anybody off the network.

She held the radio up and said “Hey Mom, this is Buffy, disaster over for now.”

She waited almost a minute, but there wasn’t a response. Giles hadn’t really been paying attention, or maybe didn’t even understand what she was doing, but her pulse started to speed up. These things were pretty easy to misdial. She dialed her Mom again.

“Hey Mom, it’s Buffy, are you there?” she asked, a little shortly.

She waited just a few seconds this time. Nothing. She got up abruptly, ignoring Giles’ protests, and grabbed for one of the station phones on a surviving desk. She made sure there was a dial tone, and rang up her home phone number.

Nobody picked up. Giles was looking at her now, worried. Buffy slammed down the phone, not paying much attention to her strength, and then clicked another code into the radio, “Everyone, this is Buffy. Anybody close to my house go there and check on my mother right now.”

“Giles, we have to go.” He didn’t make any arguments, and they booked it to the car. A few police had noticed what was going on now. None of them said a word, but a few followed her out and jumped into their own patrol car after her. Buffy drove like a demon on the way back to her house, even more recklessly than she had on the way out, but there weren’t any complaints from Giles this time. In the back of her mind, she noticed the chatter on the radio and the sirens escorting her on her mad dash through Sunnydale. A distant part of her thought she should get a siren for Joyce’s jeep.

When she got back, the front door was locked, but the back door was wide open. A few ‘99ers were already inside, but Joyce was nowhere to be found. Buffy saw the abandoned radio on the kitchen table, and she knew it was her mother’s.

* * *

Oz looked back and forth through the backyard in dismay, after already having circled the premises a few times. Willow and Buffy looked at him hopefully, but he just shook his head. “It’s like there is no scent, once they leave the house. The guy who took her has this sickly sweet smell, but it just disperses into nothing.”

“Not like they got into a car or something?” Buffy asked.

“No, no car. Just gone,” Oz said regretfully.

Buffy looked at Willow. “If it was magic, can you track it?”

Willow was visibly distraught. “Maybe with some time, but if he has a specialty it’s going to be hard. I’ll try calling Amy, she’s good with finicky stuff like this.” She pulled out her radio and made a call as Buffy stepped back inside.

The police who’d followed Buffy home were dusting for prints and looking for other physical evidence, but she wasn’t hopeful they would find anything. For the past week, despite the wild pace of events, she’d felt so in control. She wondered if it was just an illusion in the first place, for it to shatter so quickly. Giles was already inside, watching the police do their jobs.

Buffy started “Giles, we have to-”, but the phone rang and interrupted her.

She looked at it, and one of the officers nodded, “We dusted it already, you can pick up.”

The voice on the other end was deep, but she knew from the first word that this had to be the guy Oz had smelled. “I was wondering if maybe I should call City Hall instead. But you’re a personal kind of girl, so I decided you’d probably still be there, on the scene yourself. Your mother was kind enough to give me the number.”

“Let me talk to her,” Buffy demanded.

“That’s fair,” he said.

Willow already had her laptop out and was making gestures. She plugged in some kind of attachment and was waving it near the base of her phone.

There was a shuffle and she could hear her Mom, “Buffy, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t do anything, he just waved his hands and I was asleep. You shouldn’t-” there was another abrupt noise as she was cut off.

“MOM!” Buffy yelled into the phone.

The first voice was back, “There you have it, alive and well. Now, I’ve talked to Teeth about how the hospital went, but ‘consul’ Digby hasn’t come home. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?” He said the word consul derisively.

Buffy considered lying, but didn’t see the use. The fact was she didn’t have Digby anymore, and didn’t know enough about him to pull off any kind of convincing fake. It burned not to have him as a hostage. Her mom might die because she was so impulsive. “He’s wet dust in the sewers.”

The voice on the other end just laughed. “Well, that’s too bad, but don’t worry your little head about it. Nobody was really all that attached to Mr. Van Dyne, even if he was kind of useful. I regret to say though, that means the price went up a little bit.”

Buffy was sick of him leading her around by the nose. “Who even are you? What do you want?” she demanded.

“No use for me trying to play coy, I guess. The name’s Rack. And all I really want is a good payoff before I scram out of this town. The bones of Allslyra, ten Persians, and two hundred grand, cash. And maybe a little something else too, I’ll let you know about that when the time comes.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes. “What do you even mean?” She suspected she knew about the bones, but Persians? Did he want like, ancient people or something?

“You little baby coven will know what bones I’m talking about, I think you found them yourself actually. As for the Persians, your new friends at City Hall can introduce you to the kitten trade,” Rack said. “You can have a day to get all that rounded up; I’ll call you again. In the meantime, don’t make me do anything we’ll both regret.” He hung up.

Buffy looked at Willow, who shook her head and held up her hands. She just dropped the phone, feeling defeated. She didn’t know what to do.


	18. S3.5E4: The Triumvirate III

**[X] Buffy doesn’t trust that even cooperating fully will save Joyce, and even if it does, it’ll probably have some other horrible consequences beyond the obvious. She’ll try to hunt down Rack and get back Joyce by stealth or brute force.**

Giles broke the silence. “I suppose we should be thankful the kidnappers are looking to talk at all. Just what are they trying to extort out of us?”

“Kittens, bones, and money,” Buffy said dejectedly.

Giles narrowed his eyes and rubbed his glasses confusedly, but before he could come up with a response, the doorbell rang. Oz went to get it without a word.

“I came as soon as I could,” Xander said as he entered. “I had to wrap things up at the hospital first, and wouldn’t you know, there’s more bad news.” Surprisingly, Anya was following him in. Buffy didn’t think she’d be one to go in for direct conflict.

“Are you sure it isn’t good news instead?” Willow asked, still mostly paying attention to her computer. “We could sure use some good news right now.”

“Faith’s missing,” Xander replied. “We didn’t even notice at first, but they must have took her during the raid.”

Willow rolled her eyes, “Well, that’s not too bad then. I don’t think we’ll be trading many kittens for her.”

“Kittens?” Anya piped in. “So the kidnappers work mostly in demonic exchanges then?”

“You know about the kittens?” Buffy asked.

Anya replied “Xander brought me here because-”

“Set a demon to catch a demon,” he interrupted.

“Yes,” she said impatiently, “Anyway, kittens form a backbone of the demon economy for a number of reasons. Mostly, there are different religious proscriptions against many various forms of currency. Noninflationary currency, human-made currency, nonliving currency, and so on, but kittens neatly check all the important boxes. What was the ransom demand exactly?”

“Two hundred thousand dollars, plus the ‘bones of Eliza’ and ten Persians,” Buffy said. “The caller was this creep calling himself Rack, based on what Mom said he seems big with the magic.”

Upon hearing the full price for the first time, most of the room winced, and Anya’s reaction was no different. “Persians, wow, these guys must really know they have you over a barrel. They’re like the 24 karat gold of the kitten world.”

“You’re more worried about a bunch of kittens than two hundred grand?” Xander said.

“If you don’t know the right people you can’t get black market Persians at all, and they’ll cost a pretty penny even relative to that.” Anya said, upbraiding him. “Fortunately, I know the right people. I’ll need a ride to LA plus costs though.”

“Your assistance is appreciated,” Giles said. “I imagine the bones Buffy is referring to are those of Allslyra, part of the cache she found earlier this week. They’re fairly powerful, but not immediately apocalyptic; they can be used to augment a variety of dimensional portals.” He sighed. “I’m sure we all know the money will be painful for the city to lose, but I don’t see how we-”

“No,” Buffy said, finally having made up her mind. What had it been that Wilkins said, in her dream, about hard choices, and responsibility? He’d be laughing at her now, but she knew he was right about this, if he was ever right about anything. Some things you had to learn by example. “We can’t just pay this Rack guy off.”

Everyone was looking at Buffy a little strangely, but Giles was the one who risked responding, “Buffy, your mother-”

Buffy didn’t let him finish. “I mean, sure, it’s the easy choice right? But Willow got kidnapped just last month, and we paid. That was on a mission. Now, the sleazeballs of the town see that they can get what they want by kidnapping, and they snatch my Mom out of our own house. We can’t watch all of our people every hour of the day. If we pay again, this is going to just keep happening. At some point, we won’t be able to pay, or something else will go wrong, and we’ll lose someone. We need to set an example here. Make them understand that this isn’t how to deal with us.”

She continued, “That doesn’t mean we won’t be prepared to mess with them. Anya, these kittens are practically resalable right? Go to LA and get them anyway, if we don’t end up needing them we can spend them on something else.”

Anya nodded.

“Willow,-” Buffy started.

“I’ll have the department get the right bones together and all packed up. I think Jonathan was working on inventory anyway, he should be able to do it easy. For my own part I’m going to keep trying to trace Rack. Whatever he was doing mondo confused my wiretap but I did still get some data.”

Xander shared a look with Oz. “We’ll get the ‘99ers together and search around the town. Traditional gumshoeing might succeed where science and magic fail.” Buffy nodded at them, and they left with Anya, as Willow made another call on her radio.

Giles was looking at Buffy, an unreadable expression on his face. She wasn’t sure what to say, but he saved her by speaking first. “I still have some contacts amongst the community of questionable practitioners. It’s possible that Rack is known in their circles too, and I might be able to uncover something of use.”

All business then. Buffy could deal with that, for now, and hopefully fix it later. “Good. Now that you mention it, I have a contact of my own who I should give a visit.”

* * *

The hour had gotten late, and the raucous sounds from Willy’s Place were loud enough to be heard outside. When Buffy slammed the door open though, a terrified silence quickly fell over the crowd of demons, disrupted only by the quiet shaking of the building.

“Ms. Summers,” Willy said in a quiet voice, “I assure you that I absolutely didn’t know anything about the raids on the police or the hospital before they happened. I would have made sure you found out.”

She stalked forward, not answering until she was right in front of him at the bar. Patrons scurried out of her path. “That’s not what I’m here about, though it’s good to know. They took my mother, Willy. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Digby, and Rack, and that Shark guy.”

Willy nodded fearfully. “Teeth.” At Buffy’s questioning look, he elaborated, “The shark demon, he goes by Teeth. He’s sort of a local demon gangster. Was into small time stuff, before now.”

“And now?” Buffy motioned for him to go on.

“Well, you know Digby right? He was pretty cheesed at you, but didn’t seem to be doing much but gathering minions. Word is now he tipped off Teeth that he was going to attack the station so he could pull off the big hospital thing. People are talking about some kind of Triumvirate, but no one has seen hide or hair of Digby since tonight.”

“That’s because I killed him,” Buffy said, louder, so the whole crowd heard it clearly. “Now what about Rack?”

Willy made a pained expression, and started cleaning a glass. “Rack’s bad news. He’s sort of a magical drug dealer, a real skeevy character, even compared to the people I know. He took your mom?”

“Yep,” Buffy said neutrally.

“It’s going to be hard to track him down,” Willy said worriedly. “He uses magic to cloak his place and move it around. Usually any enterprising enough witch or demon can find it, but nobody’s seen him all week. I’ve had to kick out some of his strung-out junkies, they’re terrible customers.”

“Alright, so Rack’s playing hide-and-seek. Sure. What about Teeth? Can I find him?” Buffy asked.

“I could tell you where his mansion is on the edge of town,” Buffy’s eyes lit up, but Willy made a negating gesture before her hopes rose too far, “But I already heard it up and disappeared today.”

“Of course. Couldn’t be easy,” Buffy complained. “Nothing else I should know?”

Willy considered. “This is a little out of character for both of them. Real risky. Digby was the one with a cause, so if he’s dead they might be getting cold feet.”

She nodded. Their feet would certainly be cold when she was done with them. She took an extra radio off her belt with a little booklet taped to it, and put it down on the bar. “You hear anything else I need to know, call.”

Willy winced at what was probably going to be another hit to his credibility with his customers, but it’s not like she was going to give him a choice in this mood. “Sure thing.”

* * *

After reporting the relevant facts over the radio, Buffy prowled the streets herself for a few hours. She didn’t find anything much, though she did work out some of her frustrations on a vampire she noticed in passing trying to snack. The town was really rotten with them this summer.

Eventually, she found herself passing by City Hall, and walked in to see how things were going. Though it was usually closed down this late at night, Joyce’s kidnapping had all hands on deck, and nobody was complaining about it.

Soon after walking in, she encountered Cynthia with a strangely familiar girl. She was wearing glasses and had dark brown hair, but Buffy was almost sure … “Harmony?”

“Like my disguise?” she replied, twirling. Her outfit had gone from cheerleader to librarian. Slutty librarian, but still. “I figure by now everyone knows I work for you, but most people don’t actually know me that well. Being a vampire and all, I should be able to go undercover and find out things people won’t tell the good guys.”

“It’s not bad at all,” Buffy commented. “Are you sure it’ll fool people though?”

“Well,” Harmony started, then she vamped out. “People also aren’t used to seeing me like this yet.”

“Huh, yeah,” Buffy knew how much Harmony cared about her hair, and was strangely touched. “Why are you here though?”

“Are you kidding?” Harmony said. “City Hall has the best bathrooms. Wilkins really blinged them out. Plus, Cynthia’s great at cosmetics.” She gave Cynthia a friendly hug, to punctuate the statement.

Cynthia just took the hug stoically. “He was very particular about the state of all cleaning facilities.”

“Would be nice to use those if I ever had time to relax,” Buffy said. “Anyways, Cynthia, can you get the money together?”

She nodded. “It won’t be the first suitcase full of cash I’ve prepared this year. Do try to bring it back if you can though, the budget will thank us all.”

“We’ll see how things go,” Buffy said, before turning down the stairs to go investigate the magic department. In the past few days it had mostly moved into the basement, both for better access to storage and to be close to the clean room. Willow was still hacking at her house, but some of the others would be down there.

She ran into Jonathan first, noticing him going through the crates of bones in a storeroom. “You’re getting all the bones sorted out in there?” she asked.

He jumped skittishly. “Oh, hi Buffy. Yeah, some of the stuff got kind of mixed up in transport, but I’m getting it all set up. I should be able to fit them into a backpack, along with good shock protection.” He gestured to an open bag of packing peanuts. “You’d be surprised how many of these bags we have down here.”

“Wilkins loved to be prepared, I guess,” she said.

Just as she was about to turn to look elsewhere, Andrew bumped into her from behind, his head in a freaky-looking book. “Sorry Buffy!” he said. “I’m going through some of the Mayor’s old information brokers.”

“In a book?” she asked.

“Well, I mean, they’re demons,” he explained. “You have to call them up and stuff.” At her raised eyebrow, he defended himself, “Hey! Don’t worry, I got this. If you do it the right way it’s not too hard to just talk to a demon, and I’m not going to contact any of the really terrible ones anyway. Plus, a lot has been happening on the Hellmouth lately, so they’ll be eager to get the dirt and won’t want to spoil the deal. Won’t even cost us anything.”

Buffy would have probably vetoed the idea under better circumstances, but she decided she would choose her battles for now. “Just don’t bite off more than you can chew, OK?” He seemed so young to her now, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t already been doing riskier things two years ago.

Andrew nodded seriously, and went back to reading and walking. At least he seemed to be doing the research before casting the spells.

“Jonathan, have you seen Amy?” Buffy asked. “Willow said she might be able to do something to track Rack.”

“She was here earlier, and I think she tried something in the clean room,” Jonathan said. “A bust, apparently, so she was going to look through some of her mom’s old stuff at home before trying again.” He paused for a second before continuing. “She seemed really tired. I don’t know if she’s all the way recovered yet, from you know.”

“Being all ratty,” Buffy said. “I was a rat for like thirty minutes and it was seriously gross, I really can’t imagine how it felt for her to be stuck that way for months.”

“At least she was able to make things good with her dad,” Jonathan said. “I’m not sure what’s she’s going to do about High School though. She can’t exactly take summer classes now. At least not in Sunnydale.”

“If she can find my mom, I’ll just have Vanessa buy her a diploma from one of her skeevy politicians,” Buffy said.

Everyone seemed to be trying hard, but she was worried that it wouldn’t be enough, or that Rack would find out and do something extreme. She’d made her choice though, and she just had to hope her friends could help her see it through.


	19. S3.5E4: The Triumvirate IV

“You don’t really know what you’re capable of until they go after your family,” Wilkins said sadly. He cheered up quickly though, “Gosh, I just think about what a wide-eyed kid I was a hundred years ago, we could’ve almost been friends, Buffy.”

“But you were already planning to be a big demon snake, weren’t you, right from the start. Somehow I think it might’ve stood between us.” Buffy was back in her office again; she was probably dreaming in her office too, if her memory was any judge. Part of her wanted to force herself awake, but she’d probably need sleep for the battle to come. It was a good excuse; it’s not like she could admit to herself she was curious what Wilkins had to say in here.

“Well, sure. But can you really say the people in power now are much better?” he asked, a grin on his face. “I kid, I kid, but really, this isn’t a nice world. The darkness may have been forced back into the shadows with the departure of the Old Ones, but it’s still the sort of place that they found hospitable to begin with.”

“And so you decided better to bring all the bad things back into the light? Still not seeing it,” Buffy said.

He shook his head, “You kids these days, you say sunlight disinfects. I really like that phrase, you know? After all, I told myself I wouldn’t be bad. I’d use the power responsibly, and root out all the corruption and disease festering all over the place. Sure, some people would have to get eaten along the way, but my intentions weren’t that bad, really.”

Buffy raised an eyebrow, looking up from the desk with her chin on her hands. “You don’t seem to have exactly left me a corruption-free legacy. I mean Bob Monroe?”

Wilkins shrugged. “Well, that’s just what I was getting at. Do you think my Edna never got kidnapped? Forget the Hellmouth, it was the Wild West back then! And don’t think I went easy on the people who did it.” He laughed again, seeming genuinely amused. “You’d think that people would’ve learned eventually, but everyone thinks they’re a special snowflake. So I kept getting more ruthless, and well, there you go.”

“And that was it, huh? From a tortured idealist to corrupt powermonger in one easy step?” she asked.

“It’s never just one step. But after you justify the first few, the rest are a lot easier. I can’t say I regret it, but maybe I wish I could’ve seen a little bit further when I started,” he replied. “You try to protect the people you love, and then when sometimes you can’t, you start to hide them, and after too long, it’s almost as if you never had any at all.”

Buffy could see his face was wet, but she didn’t say anything about it. “So are you saying that’ll happen to me? I’ll go all psycho-killer on the people responsible, and it’ll lead me down some troubled path of dark power and dirty politics?

“Well, don’t you want to?” he asked simply. “Kill them, I mean.”

Buffy prevaricated, “Well, yeah. I mean, Shark Guy’s just some demon, and Rack-”

“Rack, you can make an exception for, right?” he asked significantly. “After all, you can’t treat magic users like ordinary mortals. We’re more dangerous than most demons, really.”

Buffy knew that was a slippery slope, but something about that logic was tempting. She decided to deflect from the subject. “You’re not the only voice in my head talking about killing these days.”

“You’re talking about the vision you had? Did it trouble you?” he asked.

“I’m just not sure what it meant. I kind of thought I had these powers all figured out, but then they’re all with the ‘behind door number one’,” she said.

Wilkins tilted his head, and gave her a naughty grin. “Sometimes you just have to read between the lines.”

Buffy’s eyes snapped open. She was ironically in more or less the same position she’d been in in the dream, with her arms down on the desk cushioning her head. Wilkins in her Slayer dreams twice in a row was a bad pattern, but she could worry about that after she saved her mom. It was already 11 AM; she’d spent too long sleeping. She reflected that all the times Wilkins was in this position might be why he had such nice bathrooms put in.

After getting herself quickly cleaned up, she was outfitted for the day and about to go out and do some more patrolling. She didn’t have any real ideas, but she wasn’t going to accomplish anything just fretting. She decided she would call up Xander and see how things were going with him; maybe she could help him cover some extra ground. Just in the middle of dialing though, she ran into Anya, who was carrying two big woven baskets.

“Mission accomplished,” Anya said proudly, and showed her the insides of them. Unsurprisingly, they had kittens. “Who are the cute little hyperinflating circulation media? You are!”

“They cost a pretty penny, but these are the genuine article,” she said. “My guy tried to cheat me with some ¾ mutts, but I’m not some youngster off the street, I’ve been exchanging kittens since before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

“Good job Anya. It makes me feel a lot better that we have these ready if we need them.” The kittens were cute, and Buffy felt a little bad about their possible fate, but if that was what it took to save her mom, Buffy would willingly become a horrible kitten slave dealer. She was starting to see what Wilkins meant about slippery slopes.

After thinking for a second though, Buffy paused. “Do we have kitten food? And litter boxes and things?”

“Already handled,” Cynthia said, stepping in and taking one of the baskets from Anya. “We actually keep needful feline supplies on hand for occasions just like this. They’ll be very well cared for as long as they’re here.”

Buffy nodded, both reassured and a little troubled that Wilkins had also apparently been a kitten dealer. Anya and Cynthia left with the kittens, and Buffy brought out her radio again, finishing her dial this time. “Xander, did you find anything? I passed out, but I can come out and search with you now.”

After a slight pause he answered. “Umm, sort of. It’s kind of a bad time Buffy, can you call me back?”

Buffy gripped the radio tighter and leaned into it, blood already racing, “Do you need my help? I can be there so fast that-”

“I’m pretty sure I have it under control, but it’s in a pretty sensitive place right now. I promise I’ll get back to you in a few minutes,” Xander said.

Buffy forced herself not to backseat patrol. “OK. Talk to you in a few, Xand.”

She put her radio back on her belt and waited at the main door, but before Xander called back she saw an exhausted looking Willow coming up the steps. Her head was hung low, and Buffy doubted there was good news to be had.

She settled on a “Hey Willow,” and tried not to let the disappointment show in her voice.

“Hey Buffy. No dice on the tracking,” she said glumly. “I even tried to run a trace from UC Sunnydale, but no matter how much computing power I shoved at the problem it didn’t accomplish anything. Whatever he’s using to cloak his tracks is like, the traveling salesman problem from hell.”

“It’s OK. You don’t have to carry the team every time.” Buffy gave her a hug. “Anyway, Xander might have some kind of lead. He was going to call me back in a few minutes.”

Willow brightened a little at that. “Really?”

Buffy nodded, “He was seriously of the vague, but he sounded optimistic.” She hoped she wasn’t trying to fool herself.

“Well I’ll do him one better then!” Amy looked a little manic, with frazzled hair and dark bags under her eyes, but she was brandishing something in her hands as if it was the holy grail. It looked like a shiny-looking bracelet with a big compass on it. “I’ve got Rack beat. This will cut through any cloaking spell he has, and point the way right to your mother!”

“Really?” Buffy grabbed for it, but quickly held herself back and extended a hand more carefully. “How does it work?”

Amy gave it to her and gestured for her to put it on. “It’s a blood compass.” She slid a latch on it, and the glass top of the compass popped up. Buffy saw that unlike a normal compass, there was no liquid inside, just a little needle lying there. “You fill it up with a little bit of your blood, and the sympathetic link between you and your mom should line the needle right up in the right direction.”

“Are you sure it’ll work?” Buffy asked, slipping the bracelet onto her left wrist. She fumbled in her pocket with the other for her trusty whittling knife.

“You aren’t adopted or anything right? If she’s your mom it’ll definitely work,” Amy said confidently.

“You’re a lifesaver Amy! I owe you way big for this, just say whatever and I’ll try to make it happen.” Buffy passed the knife to her left hand and was about to make a small cut in her right for the blood to power the device, when a voice rang out.

Andrew was running down the hall screaming, “Buffy, NO! Don’t do it!”

Buffy stopped reflexively, and looked back at Andrew, confused.

“Amy’s a traitor!” Andrew declared. “She’s working for Rack! She’s one of his junkies, she knew about him the whole time!”

Buffy looked at her in shock, not sure what to think. Amy reacted quickly though. “That’s crazy talk! Why would I do that? Willow’s been my friend since forever, and Buffy’s her friend. We’re all friends here. Maybe you’re the traitor!” she accused.

“I’m not the one who looks like he’s in Melange withdrawal!” Andrew countered. “I called a few demons, and Rack screwed one out of a deal a few years ago, so he was eager to help us. He told me that Amy was a customer there even before she got ratted. She’s a total magic addict, she might’ve even told him a bunch of our secrets and stuff.”

“Maybe the demon was lying?” Willow said. “I mean, wouldn’t we have noticed already if Amy was all addicted and treasonous?” Amy nodded along desperately with Willow’s logic.

“Then why don’t you take a closer look at that cursed item she just gave Buffy,” Andrew said. “I bet it’s some kind of a booby trap. It makes perfect sense, this whole kidnapping thing was probably a ploy just to get rid of her.”

Buffy dropped the little knife from her hands, and carefully took the bracelet back off, handing it to Willow carefully. She kept her eyes on Amy the whole time. “Can you check it out Willow? Make sure it’s everything she says it is?”

“Yeah!” Willow affirmed. “I mean, I don’t specialize in stuff like this, but with the item right here it shouldn’t be that hard to check for anything untoward. We can all go down to the clean room and I’ll run a safe scan to take a nice close look at it. We’ll get this all cleared up.”

Amy didn’t look very relieved by this idea though, and her eyes were darting back and forth like, well, like a trapped rat. Buffy moved forward to take her by the arm, just in case she needed some encouragement to come back inside the building with them, but she stepped back, avoiding her.

“OK, so I may not have been totally upfront,” Amy said, holding up her hands. “I just didn’t know how to tell you at first, and things may have gotten a little out of hand in the past few days-”

Seeing Amy all but admit her guilt, Buffy’s reserve melted like frost on a hot day. “Out of hand?” Buffy screamed. “Things got out of hand and you kidnapped my mother?” Something was breaking inside her. She wasn’t seeing red, she was seeing black.

**< KILL>**

“I didn’t know he would!” She explained. “I just, I told him some things about what was happening at first. It seemed harmless.”

Buffy was slowly walking forward, and Amy was still backing down the stairs. “And then afterwards when everything happened you didn’t speak up? Because you didn’t know how to tell us?”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Amy said desperately. “I needed it, how it felt. I was pathetic without it, I never had my mother’s raw power. I would try and try and I could barely do anything. When I was a rat, I’d run myself out, I couldn’t turn myself back and I was trapped. Powerless. He was the only one that could keep me safe.” She saw Buffy wasn’t stopping, and looked side to side again. The street had been bustling when she arrived, but it seemed all but abandoned now.

“Goddess Hecate, work thy will, before me let-”

**< KILL>**

Buffy hit her hard in the face.


	20. S3.5E4: The Triumvirate V

**[X] At the last second, Buffy pulled the blow, but the crack of Amy’s broken jaw still rang out across the empty street.**

Not only was Amy’s spell interrupted, but she was knocked backwards a little by the force of the blow. Losing her footing, she slipped down the last few steps in front of City Hall and ended up prone on the sidewalk.

Despite her earlier explosion, Buffy was speechless. Giving Amy a good smack had drained some of the outrage she’d felt, replacing it with mere annoyance and frustration. Andrew looked on at the scene he’d wrought a little stunned; maybe he’d just expected Amy to meekly surrender.

Willow had enough to say for everyone though. “Amy, you tremendous bitch. I work night after night, for months, trying to uncurse you. I bring you onboard, I vouch for you, despite your shitty past decisions and your psycho mom.”

“She’s done something like this before?” Andrew asked, surprised. “And you weren’t worried about her track record?”

Willow made a face, probably remembering the love spell incident, but didn’t respond directly to Andrew and continued to dress down Amy. “We’ve been friends since kindergarten! And you were going to what? Cripple Buffy and set the rest of us up to die too, because you didn’t feel safe, with practically everyone who matters left in town on your side? Because you wanted to get high? We were already paying you enough, you could’ve just bought some freakin’ drugs!”

Amy just moaned piteously on the ground, and Buffy sighed, walking down to … secure her? She roughly picked her up by the shoulder, but didn’t really have any idea what to do next. “Will, is there any way we can turn off her heebie-jeebies? I’m not sure what part of her I’m supposed to grab.”

Willow was a little flummoxed by the question and lost momentum in her tirade, but Anya’s voice answered it from up by the door. “Gag and blindfold are standard.” She and Cynthia had appeared, divested of kittens and drawn by the commotion. “You probably want to secure her hands somehow too, and it looks like you’ve already applied the disorienting injury. What’d she go and do?”

“She betrayed our cause to Rack for power and thrills, tempting our leader with a foul trap,” Andrew supplied, returning to his usual slightly annoying demeanor.

Cynthia walked up to Amy, still sort of awkwardly being restrained by Buffy, and expertly employed a couple big handkerchiefs as the gag and blindfold Anya had suggested. Amy let out another pained screech and struggled upon being gagged, but as usual, Cynthia was a consummate professional and it failed to even throw her off the task.

“So,” Anya continued conversationally. “How are we going to do the interrogation? Maybe just start her off with a good round of torture? I may not be the demon I used to be, but Amy seems like a fingers kind of girl. You shouldn’t actually do the pinky first though, because-”

“I don’t think any torturing will be needed,” Buffy said as she frogmarched Amy up the steps. “Probably.”

Willow procured another handkerchief from Cynthia and gingerly picked up the blood compass from where Buffy had dropped it on the steps. “Maybe we could do just one finger?” she asked.

Buffy was once again a little surprised by the uncharted depths of Willow Rosenberg, but that was hardly a concern right now. “I think Amy will be very willing to share everything she knows with us, won’t you Amy?”

Amy managed to make an affirmative-sounding whine through the gag, and the whole group moved back inside the building and up towards the conference room. Once they got there, Buffy sat Amy down in a seat and let her hands go, but still hovered threateningly behind her. Ever helpful, Cynthia provided paper and pencil, and the rest of the group seated themselves or stood nearby to get a better look.

Buffy started the interrogation. “Where’d you get this thing? Did you make it yourself, or was it Rack?”

“Rack,” Amy wrote in unsteady writing.

She continued, “When?”

“Today. My house.”

Buffy was hopeful for a second, though she knew it was a longshot, “Is he going to meet you again? Do you know how to find his base?”

“Not sure. Calls first. He wouldn’t tell.”

Buffy groaned frustratedly, and Willow picked up the line of questioning, “Is the tracking part of the compass real? Would it lead us to his hideout if we found a safe way to use it?”

Amy paused for a second, and sensing she was thinking about it a little too hard, Buffy tightened her grip on her shoulder for a second. Amy squeaked, dropping her pencil, and then when she picked it up she wrote “No. Trap.” Quailing under the hostile glares from the room, she continued, “Not kill. Portal.”

“Of course she’d say it wasn’t a lethal trap now, to curry mercy,” Anya commented skeptically, but Willow disagreed.

“No, I think that makes sense. I mean, he moves places around, it’s probably one of his specialties.” Willow considered for a minute. “We already thought that’s why he wanted the bones, they’re good for portals.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes, remembering Amy’s avaricious look at some of their ingredient haul earlier that week, “Amy, did you already steal some bones? Anything else? Did he make the portal with them?”

Amy paused again, but not for as long, and looking defeated, she wrote, “Yes. Not much. Other stuff too.”

This sent Willow into a new spiral of outrage, and the next few minutes were spent with her and Andrew getting a full accounting of the stolen goods. Apparently it wasn’t that much compared to their total supply, but the additional betrayal still stung. They were going to have to start paying more attention to inventory.

They continued like that for a while, and it was apparent that there wasn’t really anything but bad news. Amy had given Rack all their secrets (at least the ones she knew about), and she didn’t really know any of his in return. He’d promised her some power after Buffy was gone and the town was taken over, but at this point it was clear that was the ultimate goal of their enemies anyway.

Buffy was wracking her brain trying to think of more things to ask when Xander’s voice came up on her radio and surprised the room. “Hi Buffy, sorry that took so long, but things are more stable now.”

She’d totally forgotten about Xander, and was a little surprised. She picked up the radio and said, “What happened? What did you find?”

“Well, the Yeti sort of invaded the Bronze and was causing some chaos, but she didn’t hurt anyone, and I’ve got her settled down.” Everyone at the table took some time to process the absurdity of the statement, but Anya was the first one to respond. She jumped up, crawling over the table and grabbing the radio out of Buffy’s hands. “Wait, the Yeti’s a girl? How do you know the Yeti’s a girl?”

Xander’s voice responded, a little panicked by Anya’s sudden intrusion, “I mean, it’s kind of obvious? Not that I was looking, but she’s fifteen feet tall? She can barely fit in here, I have no idea how she even got inside.”

“Well, make sure you stay that way,” she said. “Not looking. Yeti women are known for being quite amorous. I’ve cursed four different men and two women for dalliances with Yetis in my time.”

“I, um.” Xander stumbled over his words. “She has been kind of touchy.”

“I’m coming right away!” Anya declared, giving the radio back to Buffy and getting off the table. “We obviously need to get this Yeti thing sorted out.”

Buffy didn’t think the situation with Amy was going anywhere fast, and figured Willow, Andrew, and Cynthia could keep her under control pretty easily in this state. “I’ll come over too Xander, just in case things escalate.”

* * *

The Bronze was surprisingly calm when they arrived, and the damage was minimal. Buffy had been expecting something like what she’d seen at the Sunnydale Lodge; destroyed walls and a trashed interior. Instead, the building itself was completely intact, and there were only a few broken tables and chairs, as well as a couple dented kegs of beer lying around. There was no Yeti to be seen, and Xander was standing in an open area by the corner, looking very confused.

“Xander!” Anya said, running over to him. “You haven’t betrayed me for some Yeti trollop have you? Where is she?”

“There was no betrayal of any kind, unless you count something that bore a suspicious resemblance to pattycake. As for where she is, you have as good an idea as I do,” he said.

Anya frowned and inspected Xander’s hands worriedly, unreassured by Xander’s explanation. “Ugh, she left some hair on your shirt!” She started to pick it off.

“How did she even get in? Or out?” Buffy asked. “Is she smaller than we expected? Does she squeeze?”

“Well the thing is, I’m not really sure,” Xander said. “People waved me in here when I was patrolling because the Yeti was here already and making a commotion.” He tried to gesture at the broken furniture, but Anya wouldn’t let go of his arms so it was kind of aborted. “I kind of recognized the signs and made sure they got her a few drinks, and that seemed to calm her down a bit. We hung out for a little while and then she just … went away?”

“You hung out?” Anya asked. “Do you play pattycake with every girl you hang out with?”

“Hey!” Xander said. “She was sort of grabbing at the waiter and I got in between and kind of pushed at her hands to show her to stop. It sort of just happened after that. There weren’t really any great ways for us to communicate.”

Buffy was more interested in this appearing and disappearing thing. “You seem pretty confused about how she left, Xander. Did she like, just pop out?”

“Maybe?” Xander ventured. “It wasn’t really a pop. More of an extended what. Trying to remember it feels like thinking about those math problems Willow used to try to teach me.” He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “So any progress on your end?”

“Negative progress,” Buffy grumped. “Amy was a traitor, or a magical drug addict or something. We caught her with a booby trap but she already fed Rack a bunch of information.”

Xander’s eyes went wide. “Wow, Amy? I never would’ve expected. I mean, she did learn a whole lot of magic really quickly last year and didn’t seem to have all that much in the way of a moral compass, so maybe I should’ve? Willow must’ve been devastated, they used to be really close.”

“That’s one way to put it. She mostly seemed to be swapping notes with Anya on which of her fingers to break first,” Buffy said. “But umm, inside I’m sure she was very morose and sad.”

“I still think we should’ve tortured her a bit,” Anya complained. “Sometimes you just need to make an example of someone, especially when you’re the new boss.”

Xander gave his girlfriend a troubled look and changed the subject, “So Rack knows we’re not all in with the whole ransom paying thing.”

Buffy looked down. “Yeah. I don’t think he’s the kind of guy that’s going to be put off much by that, but I don’t know what we’re going to do. Nobody’s found any good leads, this jerk is really good at hiding.”

“We’ll figure something out Buffy,” Xander said. “We always do.”

* * *

Despite Xander’s optimism, things didn’t improve as the day wore on. Andrew wasn’t comfortable summoning any more demons, though his earlier efforts had also confirmed Rack’s specialty with teleportation and portals. He and Jonathan were seeing if they could work out some kind of dimensional anchor to help keep Buffy grounded, but they were worried it might not play well with the spell on the mansion and result in her getting left behind at a bad moment.

Willow wasn’t helping them right now, because it turned out that she’d just fallen asleep on her feet not long after Buffy had left for the Bronze. She’d probably worked all through the night, and they were just letting her sleep for now. Buffy wanted her at her best for whatever might be happening tonight anyway.

Giles hadn’t been able to get much of anything out of his contacts, though he had managed to more narrowly classify Teeth; he was a Carchar; despite their intimidating appearances they weren’t exceptional at combat, or much of anything besides being amphibious really. They didn’t have notable weaknesses, but since he was hardly stronger than the average vampire, Buffy wouldn’t need any if it came down to a fight with him.

Buffy had held out some hope for Harmony’s plan, but the fledgling had been found out and limped back to City Hall (buzzing in at the underground entrance) a few hours before sunset. Apparently there was at least one casualty of the graduation battle that hadn’t come over to Buffy’s side, and he’d outed Harmony when he recognized her nosing around. She proudly claimed to have dusted him for his trouble, but the damage was done, and she hadn’t found out anything interesting.

Chief Matt Waters had been very cooperative, especially considering the embattled state of the police force right now, but hadn’t come up with much. There were no likely fingerprints at Buffy’s house, and their APB out on both Joyce Summers and ‘Rack’ hadn’t gotten any results either. He still had uniforms driving around searching, and had even offered more rapid transportation if they needed it, but he confirmed that the mansion Willy had told Buffy about was gone from its usual location and couldn’t be found.

Eventually, the hour got late, and despite doing some patrolling of her own in between Buffy had ended up back at City Hall. She figured that Rack would guess where she was again, and she didn’t want anyone else handling the negotiation. Sure enough, about 24 hours after Joyce had been kidnapped, Cynthia got the call, and Buffy took it in the conference room, with the Scoobies all on hand (and awake) for backup. She put him on speaker, but they’d agreed in advance she’d handle the actual talking herself.

“So, I gather you’ve been a busy little slip of a mayor today,” Rack said, opening the call.

“I do try to make sure my constituents get my best,” Buffy replied. “Are you calling to whine that your pet rat got caught, or are we going to do this deal?”

“Oh, I’m not too sore about that,” Rack said, not missing a beat. “You tried to betray me, I tried to trick you, as far as I’m concerned, it was an amusing interlude and we can call it all water under the bridge. I already know you were smart enough to gather up what I asked for, so let’s just do the trade tonight and be out of each others’ hair.”

Giles’ face was stony at that. She knew he was taking things pretty hard, but she wasn’t sure if he was more angry at Rack or afraid for Joyce. He’d been avoidy about it, but she had to think with her head now, regardless.

“How do I know this isn’t just another trap?” Buffy said. “Sunnydale as a whole is way more valuable than this ransom you’re chasing, and your goal from the start has probably been to get rid of me so your lame ‘Triumvirate’ could take over.”

“Well, that’s just the reason I don’t think I’m going to bother pulling anything,” Rack replied. “I’m pretty good at what I do, but I’ve heard enough about what you're like in a straight fight that I don’t expect to survive one if it ever happens. I’m running out of tricks, and while I think I’ve still got enough left to defend myself with, I’m not exactly a big risk taker. At this point I’d rather cut my winnings and take a nice ransom to Europe.” He paused there, but before Buffy said anything, he continued, “On the other hand, that means if you want to keep this pissing match going, people you actually care about start getting hurt. No messing around this time.”

Willow rolled her eyes hearing that, but it made a certain amount of sense. Buffy tried to fish for more information. “What about that buddy of yours, Shark-guy? He doesn’t seem like he’d want to bail just like that. And where’s Faith? I can’t have her just floating around, ready to be a pain in my ass again.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you with Faith,” he laughed. “We lost track of her ourselves!”

“What?” Buffy asked. “Did she wake up?” She saw shock fly over the faces of everyone at the table, but they managed to restrain themselves. Buffy really did think it was better if they could present a unified front instead of the usual peanut gallery effect her group had.

“Maybe, but I think some vamps still loyal to Wilkins might’ve made off with her after Digby bit the dust instead,” Rack said. “To be honest, neither of us really had any idea what we wanted to do with her anyway, our most hilarious third was kind of obsessed with the girl.”

Buffy sighed. Another problem to deal with, no matter how this turned out. “Fine then, what about the shark?”

“Well, you’re right that he probably wouldn’t be so happy about taking the ransom and running.” Rack was quiet for a while, but she could still hear his breath on the line. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll throw him in, free of charge with your mom, just to prove there’s no hard feelings. You can ransom him off yourself, use him as an example, whatever suits your fancy. I won’t have to pay him, or have him breathing down my neck about breaking the deal we had. Helps us both.”

More backstabbing from Rack. She wasn’t surprised, but she wasn’t convinced either. “So you say you want to deal? Where do we deal? Gonna tell me where that mansion of yours is?”

“Ha! No way. Bring the ransom to Kingman’s Bluff in one hour, alone, and I’ll make sure you get your mom back in one piece. I’ll fool that idiot gangster into being there too, I don’t imagine you’d need any backup to handle the likes of him anyway.” Rack hung up, and the dial tone washed over the room.

Buffy was quiet now. She wanted to hear reactions from the group.

Xander piped in first, “Well, call me crazy, but I think he’s a no-good liar and we can’t trust him.”

“Duh,” Willow agreed. “He’s had secret agendas and resources this whole time. This could just be the next phase of his evil plan.”

“If he is telling the truth,” Giles looked pained. “It would solve our immediate problems.”

“Do you think he could be?” Buffy asked.

“He’s a coward at heart,” Giles stated flatly. “The type of magic a sorcerer uses often reflects their character. I think Rack did this because he saw an opportunity to do it relatively easily, but someone with magic like his likes to run, they like to hide. One of his allies is already dead, so it makes sense for him to turn on the other.”

“I think maybe we have to play it that way?” Oz said. “We’re sort of out of time.”

Willow looked a little betrayed; Buffy could tell that despite being the last kidnapping victim, she was the most gung-ho on the warpath. Oz had a point though; they’d tried to look for other angles and they hadn’t found any they could use.


	21. S3.5E4: The Triumvirate VI

**[X] Buffy brings the ransom alone, and tries to do the trade legit. She can’t risk her mom without anything solid, and at least two out of three of the perpetrators will suffer for their crimes.**

“Rack’s admitted he’s betraying Teeth right?” Xander brought up. “Maybe we could get in contact with him, play them off against each other.”

“We don’t exactly have his phone number,” Buffy said. “Though I could probably get it from Willy.”

“Even if you could,” Giles warned, “It’s very likely Rack is watching Teeth’s moves with this little time left. Add to that, any violent confrontation between them could be very dangerous for Joyce.” The group frowned at that.

“Teeth still wants to take over the whole town too,” Oz reminded everyone. “He has less reason to cooperate with us than Rack does. If we warned him he might get rid of Rack and then who knows what he’d do with Buffy’s mom.”

“We could just escalate more,” Willow suggested. “Maybe Anya still has a couple friends in the vengeance business? Rack could totally be a fair target.”

“Way too unpredictable,” Buffy said.

“Very outside the box though,” Oz cut in.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Just because Anya is on team sane and reasonable now doesn’t mean any of her demon friends are. None of us even remember our actual encounter with her vengeancey side, it could easily backfire and make things way worse.”

“It was just an idea!” Willow defended, not just getting a skeptical look from Buffy, but from Giles too, who’d been too surprised to even say anything. “You know, brainstorming and all.” Oz gave her a pat on the shoulder and she settled down a bit.

Buffy sighed. “Look guys, we tried. But in the end it’s only money, and we’ve got nothing else solid right now. We’re just going to have to ramp up security in the future to stop this happening again.” Buffy hoped she wasn’t making the easy choice instead of the right one.

* * *

There hadn’t been much time to prepare, but as Buffy walked up Kingman’s Bluff, she felt as ready as she could be to do the deal. She had the money in the same backpack as the bones; the crew at the office had actually spent some time copying serial numbers today, so there was hope they might be able to track down Rack with them later. As for the bones, they’d considered keeping some back, but since they had started with one full ‘skeleton’ (it wasn’t anything like a human one, as far as Buffy could tell) it was deemed to easy to notice something was missing on inspection.

The kittens were in their original baskets, keeping Buffy’s hands full, but they were at least fed and watered before the trip, so they were pretty calm. Buffy didn’t really feel bad about the bones or the money, but trading kittens to demons was sketchier than the sort of things she’d hoped to be doing as mayor. Nobody had explained to her exactly what happened to the kittens at the end of the line, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Rack hadn’t said anything about coming unarmed, and Buffy was also carrying a variety of stakes and throwing knives. A crossbow was too unwieldy considering all of her other baggage, but considering the level of opposition Giles had thought she’d be better off with ranged options than something big and scary in melee. Buffy had really appreciated the knives against the Chupacabra too, and she’d worked in some more training with them in the past week.

Xander had actually brought up the possibility of a gun in case Rack showed his face somewhere, but given Buffy’s lack of experience with the weapon and the warlock’s penchant for illusions that had been vetoed; the only other person on the bluff it would probably hurt very much was Joyce.

Last but not least, she was wearing a charm necklace under her shirt, the product of Andrew and Jonathan’s last ditch efforts with some of their other supplies. It would disrupt magic trying to teleport her, but it had a limited shelf life and a spell too big might burn it out prematurely. Buffy thought she should be fast enough to escape any trap before it could fire a second time though, so that was probably good enough for now.

Finally, she reached the plateau on top. Her attention zeroed in on her mom first, about a hundred feet away; she was tied up and held precariously near the edge of the cliffs by a pair of vampires. Teeth and another couple vampires were standing closer to Buffy, blocking her path, and Rack was nowhere to be seen. Buffy could’ve easily killed all the demons here, but there was no way she could save her mom in time if a fight broke out.

Teeth made a welcoming gesture with his hands before rubbing them together greedily. “Slayer! I see you’ve seen some sense. I hope you realize that this wasn’t anything personal; I’ve treated it strictly as a business opportunity, and your mother’s been in the best of care.”

It irritated Buffy even more that Teeth was still lying to her face, what with his plan to take over Sunnydale and all, but it wasn’t safe to show that card yet. Instead, she bit back on a different angle, “The same care that got Faith re-kidnapped right under your big nose?”

Teeth raised his hands resignedly. “Well, I wouldn’t actually call that one a kidnapping; it was more a matter of disputed custody, a favor for a friend. Digby might not have… survived his encounter with you, but I know a lot of his pals were fond of your darker half too. She’s probably fine.”

She wasn’t sure if that was good news or not. She just hoped she wouldn’t need to deal with a Vampire Faith anytime soon. “Anyways, just bring me my mom.”

“Not so fast.” Teeth said. “You can see your mother right over there. Show us the goods first.”

Buffy scowled, setting down the baskets of kittens in front of her where they were visible. Then she took off her backpack, and opened it up, showing the stacks of cash and carefully padded bones. Snyder’s words from a month ago asking why she couldn’t just be normal and do drug deals were passing through her head.

Teeth on the other hand, was overjoyed, lowering his sharky snoz to take a big whiff of one of the baskets. “That’s the stuff alright. 100% Persian. I don’t suppose I could have the name of your dealer?” Without waiting for a answer, he gestured for the backpack. Buffy held it closer to him, and he took a good look inside, even going so far as flipping through one of the stacks of cash.

“Satisfied?” Buffy asked, not letting the backpack go yet.

“Everything I could’ve dreamed of,” he said, and turned back, snapping his fingers at the two thugs with her mom. They dropped her in the dirt on the edge of the cliff and backed away from her, though they were still close enough to be threatening. Buffy didn’t play games, and let got of the backpack, booking it to get her.

As Buffy closed the distance the vampires backed off further, clearly afraid of what would happen to them if they were too close once her mom was safe. Her mother’s eyes looked worried, and she seemed to be trying to communicate something, but a gag in her mouth made it unintelligible. Buffy ignored the spooked vampires, and once she reached her mom she ripped apart the ropes binding her with her bare hands. Her mom was still struggling to say something though, and Buffy more carefully took the gag off to let her talk.

“It’s a trap!” She cried, managing to rub away some loose brush from the ground at the same time. It revealed an arcane pattern hidden on the ground beneath them, and Buffy quickly grabbed her mom to prevent her getting swept away, but after bracing for a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Her necklace didn’t even heat up like Andrew had warned her it would, so she knew that wasn’t blocking any effects. Not looking the gift horse in the mouth, Buffy hustled herself and her mother away from the cliff and out of the circle’s radius before looking around.

The other two vampires had rejoined their leader, and they all were looking at her with confused expressions. She also couldn’t see the backpack anywhere, and even as she was looking the last basket of kittens seemed to phase out, disappearing from the ground. It seemed like Rack had decided discretion was the better part of scummy extortion after all, and left his partner hanging in the wind. Buffy was still going to come away a loser today, but she could at least make sure someone else lost even worse.

“Are you OK Mom?” she asked.

“I suppose I’m fine, but that Teeth character was very rude. He even propositioned me!” Joyce complained.

Teeth was just digging a deeper hole. “Stay back here. I have to deal with these losers now.” She took a last look around in the starlight to make sure there weren’t any vampires or other nasties hiding, and then broke into a run at Teeth and his gang, a stake already in her hand.

The vampires moved forward to meet her charge, but Teeth was hanging back, searching the ground worriedly. She heard him say, “That snake double-crossed us!”, and then she was in the thick of combat.

The first vampire she swung at narrowly avoided being dusted, and two others tried to exploit the opening by coming at her high and low. She dodged through the middle, doing a sideflip at hip height to kick one in the stomach savagely, then rolling back off the ground to face them before they could react. The fourth vampire tried to get her from behind, but she flipped him over her shoulder and into one of the two left charging her from the front. The other one met her stake when he was isolated unexpectedly and turned to dust.

She took a second to look back at Teeth, and saw he’d abandoned his search for the loot and taken off down the hill. He’d gotten smart, but it was too late. She whipped a knife down at him and it caught him in the back of the knee, sending him crashing into the dirt and turning his run into a roll. The vampires were back on her then, and even though she judged this was the better class of minion, they were still just minions, and the three of them left weren’t nearly enough to trouble her these days.

They worked together well enough on the attack, but she was too strong and too fast. She made a hole in their group by just charging through one of them, and staked another as he tumbled to the ground. The third abandoned the fray and started running back at her mom, but the distance was way too far and she caught him and staked him the back before he’d even gotten halfway.

She noticed the shocked expression on her mother’s face (she hadn’t seen her really fight very often, and especially not lately), but didn’t have time to do anything about it now. She went back to finish the last one, and he made a good try of things for a few seconds but it ended with a punch in his growlies and a stake in his heart.

With his hanger-ons dispatched, Buffy strolled down to find Mr. Teeth struggling to crawl away, the knife still stuck in his leg. The blood was actually a very human-looking red; she’d expected it to look different for some reason. “Honestly, I’m surprised you only brought four. After hearing about the police station, I’d think you’d have known better.” Buffy felt a little conversational now. Teeth was so just pathetic that she didn’t even feel all pumped-up and fighty anymore.

He sighed, and stopped crawling. “Rack told me that too many vampires might be too many variables. Had to be careful not to foul his net, after all.” He chuckled weakly at that.

“That Rack’s sure a clever guy,” Buffy said regretfully. “I kinda hope he shows his face around here again, but I don’t think he’s dumb enough to do that. At least I’ve got you though. We can have all kinds of fun.”

Teeth shuddered. “Now, I know that I seem like a real puffer now, but I can be useful to you.” He managed to turn himself over to face her, grimacing at what the effort did to his leg. “I know when I’m beat, and you’ve shown you’re the big fish in this pond now. I’ve got minions, contacts, I know the pulse of this town. It could all be yours. I could even rustle up some kittens, I mean, not Persians, but something to tide you over until I could pay you back.” He gulped, taking in Buffy’s stony expression. “I will pay you back, and more! Just give me some time.”


	22. S3.5E4: The Triumvirate VII

“Useful,” Buffy said derisively. “You can be useful. Do you know that until about this time yesterday, I didn’t even realize you existed.”

She waited, as if expecting some kind of response, but Teeth didn’t seem to know what to say.

“A lot happens in this town,” she said, taking on a lecturing tone. “Demons go on rampages. master vampires create drama. Weird magical effects go off and cause all sorts of hijinx. Sometimes, there are even world-ending apocalyptic threats. But none of that really concerned you, did it?” She could sort of understand why villains monologued so much. It really relieved stress.

“I … I can’t say it did.” Teeth just sounded resigned at this point. Maybe he’d been on the other side of speeches like this before, and he knew how they ended.

“And do you know why?” she asked rhetorically, fingering another knife. “It’s because you were just a small-time mob boss, doing small-time things. But for whatever reason, yesterday you decided to step up to bat in the big leagues. How did-”

“Buffy.” Her mother had walked down off the plateau and found them on the side of the hill. “What’s going on?” She sounded a little confused, and Buffy remembered that most people had terrible night vision. The top of the bluff had been brighter with its exposure to the city lights, but the approach was darker.

Buffy shook her head. That’s what she got for playing around when she should have been getting things done. Her mom didn’t need to see this though. “I’m just finishing things up.” She pulled her radio off her belt and handed it to her. “Go down to the road where it’s more safe and call for a pickup, I’ll be right there.”

Joyce walked a little closer, squinting at Teeth, lying wounded on the ground. “It doesn’t seem too dangerous anymore. You got rid of all the vampires already, didn’t you?” She seemed a little worried, despite her words.

Buffy tried not to be frustrated, but was reminded of all the times her mom had gotten involved in the past year without understanding the realities of the situation. She was probably already traumatized, and she didn’t need more nightmares. “Mom, just go. I need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Joyce hesitated, her gaze wandering between Teeth on the ground bleeding through his expensive suit, and the knife in her daughter’s hand. “If this is because he was rude to me, it … it wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. You don’t have to do this, Buffy. Nobody got hurt.”

That struck a bad chord. “Nobody got hurt? Police died at the station mom. People I’d met. This was all part of the same plan to kidnap you, send me off to some alternate dimension, and take over the whole town. A lot of people got hurt, and if they’d gotten their way they would’ve hurt a lot more.”

“But, aren’t there laws or something, to take care of this?” Joyce argued. “I mean, he isn’t just some rabid animal.”

“That’s just what he is, Mom,” Buffy said. “He’s a demon. He doesn’t have a soul, and he’s demonstrated that he’s a danger to you, to the whole town. What did you think my job was like? Do you think I can just drag him off to jail, and let the California courts take care of this? He’s got a shark for a head, they wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Joyce looked like she was swallowing something nasty. “Buffy, I’ve heard you talk about souls like that before, and I don’t know where you got it from. I know I didn’t raise you to be religious like this, and Hank didn’t even go to church.”

“This isn’t some fantasy!” Buffy shouted, “I’m not some hillbilly thumping a bible. Souls are real! My best friend grabbed one out of the sky and stuck it into a vampire last year. Some drug dealer even waved his hands at you yesterday and made you pass out, do you still think I’m just delusional about all of this?”

“No, of course not,” Joyce snapped. “But maybe you need to rethink some of your assumptions. You’re not just some vigilante crimefighter anymore, you’re the mayor of the whole town. A lot of people live here, and my guess is a lot of demons live here too. If you just go around executing them whenever you feel like it, then nothing’s ever going to change.”

“She has a point,” Teeth interjected from the ground. “Your mom’s a smart woman.”

“Shut up,” both of them replied quickly, before turning their attention back on each other.

Buffy closed her eyes for a second to calm down, and then replied carefully. “Look. We’ve all had a difficult past 24 hours. You might have a point about some of what you’re saying, and I probably need to get a better handle on the demon community living here. But what happened wasn’t just a bad decision or a crime spree, it was totally beyond the pale.”

“Buffy-,” Joyce tried.

“Things like this aren’t some special occurrence. They happen practically every week. I need to be able to deal with them, and it has to be fast and final. It’s the way I dealt with Pat, it’s the way I dealt with your fake kids, and it’s the way I dealt with the last mayor. Just … go this time, and let me deal with this one too.”

Joyce steeled her expression. “No. Maybe you have to do this, but if you do, then I should at least have to watch. I’m your mother, you don’t need to protect me from your decisions or your life.”

**< KILL>**

Part of Buffy wanted to reconsider, but she quashed it. Even if Teeth wasn’t the worst kind of demon out there, some kind of drummed up trial at a time like this would look too much like indecision and mercy. With Rack having escaped, she had to make the sort of statement that would make people afraid to try to repeat his success.

“Fine. You want to see it so bad? Here it is.” She knelt down, and told herself this was for her mom’s own good. Then she made a quick slash across Teeth’s throat before the demon even realized what was happening.

There was fear in her mother’s eyes as she watched him choke and bleed out, but she kept watching until he stopped moving.

They didn’t say much after that.

* * *

“So things are still frosty at Casa del Summers?” Xander asked.

“With a side of biting wind and blinding snow,” Buffy replied. She’d been awkwardly dancing around her mom since the Teeth incident two days ago, but even from their limited interactions it was obvious that she’d swung from the very temporary state of proud back to her more usual attitude of disappointed. In hindsight, killing her captor right in front of her face might not have been the best way to win an argument, but Buffy still thought that the wake-up call had been needed.

Buffy and Xander were relaxing in the little courtyard in the middle of the Crawford street mansion. The debris had been cleaned away and some outdoor furniture had been setup as part of the cleanup effort, but it was still a little worn down. It made for a nice secluded spot when people weren’t training in it though. Xander had business at what had become the new City Watch base practically every day, while Buffy was mostly dodging both deskwork and mom guilt.

“Well, on the plus side, my uncle Rory is pretty happy with you,” Xander said.

“He was so sad when I told him the Chupacabra was forever reduced to a stain in my outfit,” Buffy remembered. “And the Yeti seems at least friendly-adjacent too.”

“But now he’ll have a shark-man to join his recovered Sasquatch,” Xander said.

“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” Buffy agreed. “If only my mom would see it that way.”

“Well, the whole throat cutting thing was kind of brutal, from how you described it,” Xander made a concerned face. “Plus I’m sure she was already pretty shook up from the magical kidnapping and all.”

“I know I could’ve handled it better,” Buffy sighed. “This really was the best way though. I’m concerned enough about more attempts as it is, and demons only really understand the language of murder and terror. Plus she was definitely still living in fantasy land about the whole Hellmouth thing.” She shook her head. “Anyways, Willow had some ideas. She’s going to do something else with the spells on the radios I think.”

Xander paused, searching for the right words. “She’s been working really hard lately. Are you kind of worried? I’m a little worried.”

“Worried about what?” Harmony had noticed them, and was peeking out from the gateway leading back inside. It wasn’t too sunny in the courtyard, but Buffy was surprised she was even getting this close. Fledges had good reason to be skittish about sun, they went up like kindling.

Xander just rolled his eyes. “Harmony, if you’re announcing yourself now you’ve probably been listening in on us for the past ten minutes.”

She smiled, showing teeth. “I know, isn’t it great? I love being so sneaky and … listeny?”

“That’s our Harmony,” Xander said, a little sarcastically.

“Anyways, Willow is a total nerd,” Harmony said. “She’s probably living it up with all this nerdy stuff to do.”

“Keyword: All,” Xander said. “To the exclusion of boring things like sleep. And she’s been so vindictive lately. She was even agreeing with Anya!”

“I don’t know, maybe that’s just Willow? She took Amy’s betrayal really hard,” Buffy said. “Having someone you cared about suddenly turn into a complete monster is a major downer, take it from me.”

“But my Willow is a kind and generous spirit,” Xander protested.

“Willow Rosenberg, whose resume includes presidency of the ‘We-hate-Cordelia’ club?” Buffy asked innocently. “We all love her, but she’s never been big on the forgiveness.”

“Yeah, I think Buffy’s right.” Harmony said. “Willow can be a bitch sometimes, but she’d never do anything that would really make Buffy mad.”

“Interesting phrasing.” Xander raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, Buffy just has such a magnetic personality.” Harmony started a gesture with her hands but quickly stopped when one almost went into the indirect sunlight. “Willow can totally be mean, but I bet you’ll always be able to rein her back in if you need to.”

“Magnetic.” Xander said significantly.

“Umm.” Harmony’s mouth seemed to lag a bit as her brain caught up to it. “I mean like, ah, she’s a natural leader, and stuff?” At Xander’s piercing gaze, she continued, “What? It’s totally true.” She folded her arms over her chest defiantly, and looked over at Buffy kind of desperately.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence Harm,” Buffy said. She privately agreed with Xander that this was a little weird, but didn’t want to question it. Whatever was going on in Harmony’s undead mind had been working out so far, and despite all the allies they had they were desperately short of anyone that could fight seriously in melee.

Her defensive posture relaxed again, and she said, “Well, anyway, enough about boring old Willow. Give us the actual gossip Xander. Anya! What’s going on with you two?”

“Well, uh, it’s kind of complicated.” Xander was the one on the backfoot now.

“It doesn’t seem very complicated to me.” Buffy smiled tauntingly. “She was so super possessive the other day. She practically ripped the radio out of my hand and then ran off to fight the Yeti herself.”

“Oooooh!” Harmony squeed.

“And then when we got to the Bronze, she was picking Yeti hair off him all concerned and disturbed.” Then Buffy lowered her voice, “The Yeti was playing pattycake with him!”

“Total scandal!” Harmony said. “I remember Aura had a pattycake incident in first grade, those are a dangerous business.” She nodded seriously.

Xander put his head in his hands. “Laugh it up guys. I mean, yes, we’re dating. And she’s kind of possessive, but in a nice way.”

“In a nice way!” Buffy and Harmony parroted in stereo.

Xander just groaned.


	23. S3.5E5: This is Sunnydale I

** S3.5E5: This is Sunnydale **

“I’m telling you, you wouldn’t believe me without seeing it,” Harmony said. “You’d probably think it was like, some twisted vampire fantasy thing of mine, and no, eww.”

Harmony still wouldn’t tell Buffy just what was going on, so she’d followed her into the bad part of town. Buffy would’ve almost suspected it was a trap, except that it was just too weird of a way to do it. Harmony seemed genuinely disturbed, and there didn’t seem to be anyone left in Sunnydale willing to go against her after last week anyway.

“If you found this when you were undercover, why didn’t you just show it to me right away?” Buffy asked.

“Well, I only heard about it then,” Harmony said. “I kind of went to investigate myself later because I didn’t believe it could be true, and besides you were all grumpy and sad after we lost the ransom and Rack escaped and your mom told you you were a bad mayor.”

Buffy made a face and didn’t reply, but she privately agreed that she’d had enough of Hellmouthy troubles for a while after that. She’d taken it easy for the last few days though, and now she was back and ready to slay demons and budgets alike.

Taking in the deteriorating quality of the neighborhood, Buffy came to a sudden realization. “It isn’t drugs, or umm … ‘vice’ is it? I mean, I know the public image thing I have going is little miss crimefighter, but stuff like that could maybe be better left to the cops? Matt seems like he’s settling in pretty well.”

“Well,” Harmony paused. “Kind of. But I don’t think Matt should be handling this, at least not, like, at first blush. There are vampires involved, and they’re still cross-training with Xander’s crew to get better at that side of things.”

Despite Harmony’s reassurances, Buffy wondered how bad mundane issues like that were in Sunnydale. Even though things didn’t look much better than some of the seedier parts of LA, she knew actual human gangs were absent from her city, likely because they were easy prey for supernatural predators. She didn’t have any idea what the situation was with drugs though, especially since those could easily be dealt behind the safety of a threshold. None of this had been her responsibility before, but she was already having her doubts about just foisting the problem off on Matt. She wasn’t just responsible for supernatural problems anymore, even if that was got her into this in the first place.

Before she could get herself into too much of a funk about new, non-slayable, issues she had to deal with, Harmony spoke up again. “Well, this is it.” She pointed to an abandoned-looking tenement in front of them, with a heavy brick staircase leading up to the porch and partially concealing the door.

Buffy was ready to put an end to this mystery. She narrowed her eyes, swung up over the steps, and burst through the door. It hadn’t even been locked, but she banged it back against the wall anyway as she strode in.

In her first scan of the room, she thought it was a normal vamp nest. A half dozen or so were just lounging around in game face, and there were even a couple people being eaten right in front of her eyes! Strangely though, they didn’t really react to her entrance with much aggression or fear, though one girl vampire recognized her and started backing away. The place was way filthier than it had looked from outside; it was lit by candlelight, the furniture was rotting and bloodstained, and random debris was everywhere.

Buffy was about to just start slaying, and pulled out a stake. She didn’t know why Harmony had thought this dive was anything special, but she supposed it was a job that needed doing anyway. Before she could act though, she heard Harmony behind her, “Wait! It’s voluntary. I mean, it’s gross, but those people aren’t going to die.”

Looking more closely, Buffy did see that the feedings looked a little different than normal. The victims were older and looked less healthy than usual vampire targets, and were only being bitten on the arm. There was another (probable) human just passed out on one of the couches, not dead as Buffy had originally assumed. And even as she stared in confusion, the feeding vamps all disengaged, eying her stake and seeming surprised.

“Just what exactly is going on here?” Buffy asked angrily, lowering her stake for the time being and looking around the room again.

“That’s what I should be asking you!” The biggest vamp got in her face aggressively, and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I don’t know what kind of shit you’re into, but you’re disturbing the other customers, and woodgrain’s banned in here. Get the fuck out!” He tried to shove her back towards the door, and was confused when it didn’t work.

“Guess I need more publicity,” Buffy commented, before launching him across the room with a shove of her own. He crashed against the wall, cracking the fading paint job and landing in a heap on the ground.

Before she could expand on that, the fearful vamp explained for her, “That’s the new mayor, you idiot!”

“I don’t care who she is!” Another vampire said, this one wearing a tacky fake-leather jacket. “With Teeth gone this is all mine, and I’m not letting her just walk in and take it back!” He charged her clumsily, waving an old lamp like a baseball bat.

 **< KILL**>

Even though she was starting to suspect this wasn’t a very serious situation, this guy was asking for it, and Buffy decided a statement needed to be made. She parried the lamp easily, breaking it in two with her arm, and then jammed her stake home in the vampire’s chest. He’d finished turning to dust before the other half of the lamp even landed, bonking the first big vamp on the head off in the corner.

“Now,” Buffy said calmly. “It seems clear something weird is going on here, and I’d like to know exactly what it is. Either that, or I can just dust all of you, and chalk it up to another day on the job.”

Everyone was quiet at that, afraid to attract her attention next. The vampires were frozen now, and a few were trying to subtly look around for exits, while the humans who had just been fed on just looked confused and a little dazed. The fat guy lying on the couch slept on, undisturbed.

Finally, scared vamp girl broke the silence, talking warily from behind a busted recliner, “It’s a suck joint. We don’t kill anyone here, they just pay and go.”

Even as she said it, a tispy guy in a suit stumbled down from upstairs, needing the banister to make safe progress. Halfway down though, he noticed them all standing there and seemed to sober up a little, picking up speed and fleeing the place as everyone awkwardly watched him go.

“I think my parents know that guy!” Harmony commented. “I’m not sure how I can normalify this gossip though.”

Buffy chose to just press forward. She was pretty sure she got it now. “They pay you? Is this like, a bordello or something?” She gestured vaguely at the door the probable John had fled out of.

“Sometimes we do that too,” vamp girl said, still hiding. Some roaches were skittering under the chair she was behind, and it was kind of distracting. At least there weren’t any mice.

Harmony decided to explain more, “I was obviously kind of skittish about going hunting when I was undercover, so they tried to recruit me for here. I’ve been staking the place out sometimes since then, and everyone that’s gone in has come out again.”

“I know this is pretty ick Harm, but why didn’t you just tell me?” Buffy said. She wasn’t sure how she would’ve reacted or even if she would’ve believed it, but the surprise curveball wasn’t helping her decision making any.

She frowned, “I mean, I thought they were maybe kind of like me? Most fledges have super impulse control issues instead of being able to do things like plan two days into the future. I kind of wanted to know more about what was going on before I sent a slay-guided missile at the place.”

“We get new ones like that a lot, the wild fledges,” scared vampire said. “We don’t let them use the upstairs so it doesn’t get out of hand much, and we always kick them out after.”

“Much?” Buffy said, annoyed. “When was the last time someone died here?”

She hesitated, but eventually she must’ve decided Buffy wouldn’t believe a lie. “Five months ago. But-”

Another vampire girl on the couch cut her off, blood still on her face from the guy she’d been snacking on, “Way to get us all staked Gwen.”

“BUT,” Gwen continued, talking over her coworker, “we really aren’t much worse than the crack den my mom used to go to, sometimes people just aren’t healthy enough.” She still hadn’t come out of game-face, and it was a little weird for Buffy to be having a quasi-reasonable discussion with her. Angel and his whole creepy family mostly kept it under control, and Harmony seemed to really push herself to stay out of it when she wasn’t fighting.

Buffy recognized the attempt to tug on her heartstrings, and wondered if it was even true, “The crack den where?”

“Blackwood and Cyan,” she answered quickly. “Was still going last I knew.”

Buffy wasn’t sure how much of what she was hearing was lies, and decided to bring out her radio to put Gwen under a little pressure. She quickly dialed Matt. “It’s Buffy. This might sound weird, but I just got a tip that there’s a crack den at Blackwood and Cyan, it’s…” She looked significantly at Gwen.

“The red two-story, garage has busted windows,” Gwen added, getting the idea.

Buffy was about to repeat, but Matt said “I heard. Never had these radios work so well in San Fran. I’ll check that out for you, was there anything else?”

“That’s it for now, just tell me what you find,” Buffy said, clicking the radio back into passive mode. Gwen had kept a straight vampy face the whole time. Either she was an excellent liar or she was telling the truth.

That settled, Buffy pursed her face, thinking about what the hell she was supposed to do here. Gwen interrupted again though, still looking to survive somehow, “We’ve got money too!” This produced some groans from around the room, but no one actively gainsaid her this time. “Teeth was making us pay protection, but we could give it to you instead. We don’t use it for much except blood when business gets slow.”

“We’re not exactly flush with cash these days,” Harmony commented, and Buffy knew it was true, whatever her motives in saying it. The ransom costs had made a hole in their carefully planned budget, and Cynthia had been bugging her about finding ‘new income sources’ lately. Leaving all these vampires in the wild was super-dangerous though, and Buffy thought at least some of them had to be killing people in their off-hours. It was one thing to have Harmony wandering around, but she was under constant supervision, tricked into thinking she was cursed, and also acted like a confused puppy half the time on top of all that.

Buffy wasn’t sure what to do. Her mom had wanted her to be a fairer mayor to the demon population, but she was pretty sure that this wasn’t what she had in mind.


	24. S3.5E5: This is Sunnydale II

“Is this everyone who works here?” Buffy asked.

Gwen tilted her head worriedly. “Trish is still upstairs.” Buffy made a gesture to get on with it, and Gwen shouted for her.. The other vampire started at the scene as she came down the stairs, but after a bit of wordless communication with Gwen she walked up by her side and stood quietly, also looking worried.

When everyone was assembled, there were nine vampires in the room, not counting Harmony or the one Buffy had already dusted. Most of them were girls, but there were two guys, one of whom was the big one that was still in the corner. As was usual for random vampires that didn’t have a particular reason to hide, all of them were fangy. The humans (at least the three that were awake) seemed a little more with it by now, but even they seemed interested in what was going on and showed no signs of leaving. Buffy considered kicking them out before this got ugly, but in the end it was probably going to be more dangerous on the street, so she just ushered them over to an empty area to the side instead.

In the end, the problem was that even if some of these vampires were relatively unobjectionable, she definitely couldn’t trust them all. She had to treat the danger to innocent victims as more important than the other concerns here, but she felt that maybe she could strike a balance. Minimize the risk, maximize the reward. And even if what she was about to do wasn’t very nice to the vampires here, it at least felt a little more fair.

“So. There are going to be some changes,” Buffy put up her index finger. “First, this place is seriously gross. You’re going to clean up the floor, swap out this furniture, and get the power-”

“We don’t actually own this place,” someone interrupted. She was the same vampire who had complained about truth telling before.

“I can get the paperwork dealt with,” Buffy said. “You can take ten percent off whatever you were giving Teeth to get that dealt with, anything else comes out of whatever you were keeping.” Buffy didn’t really have any way to check on this, but figured Gwen wouldn’t be too keen to lie to her after this talk was done.

There was some grumbling, but Buffy didn’t give them time to muster more objections, and put out her middle finger to count to two. “Second. I don’t care what your pecking order was before. Gwen is in charge. Obviously, none of you are allowed to bite anyone outside of this building, none of you are allowed to kill anyone ever. If I hear about this rule getting broken, the vampire responsible gets dusty, and if it wasn’t Gwen that told me, she gets dusty too.” Gwen squeaked.

Buffy theatrically raised an eyebrow, and took a few steps into Gwen’s personal space. “Is that OK with you, Gwen? You can keep all your buddies under control, right?”

She managed a very quiet, “I think so.”

“You don’t sound very confident,” Buffy acted worried herself. “Maybe this whole experiment is a bad idea, I could-”

Trish grabbed Gwen’s hand, and hastily whispered something in her ear. “I can do it,” Gwen said, louder now.

Buffy nodded, and then took the opportunity to glance around the room. The vampires still looked a little complacent, having decided that this was mostly for show, but Harmony seemed concerned. The humans just looked mystified.

Buffy frowned, letting her troubled expression build. “It’s OK Gwen. I’ve actually got a pretty good read on you. You’re a coward.” She quivered, starting to back up, but Buffy stopped her with a strong hand over her shoulder. “No, it’s good. I know you’ll be too afraid of me to screw around, too afraid to lie. You’ll keep me as well informed as you can. But the problem with that is some of these friends of yours probably aren’t cowards, and when push comes to shove, you aren’t going to be able to stop them.” Gwen was looking confused now instead of afraid.

Buffy stepped back from her a little again, and finally counted to three on her fingers. “That brings me to the third change. Half of you are going to re-die, right now. Gwen, pick the four of them you think you can actually control.” Buffy put a concerned tone into her voice. “Pick fast, or things might get out of hand.”

Trish seemed to burrow into Gwen’s side, and the room was instantly filled with the noise of pleas and threats. Gwen didn’t pay attention to any of it though, just looking Buffy desperately in the eyes. In retrospect, this whole stunt had come out a little more psycho than she’d intended, but if it made it more likely to stick in their heads, all the less likely any humans would end up hurt.

The big vamp finally got up out of the corner and approached, but Buffy didn’t let him get physical with Gwen, moving over to him in a flash and battering him back onto the floor like a rag doll. The rest of them took their cue from that, and stayed where they were, but the noise of their entreaties didn’t stop. Buffy noted happily that Harmony had moved to cover the humans; she didn’t think it would be an issue, but it was a good thought.

“Trish,” Gwen started slow, and there were barely any sounds of disappointment, as nobody was surprised by that. Then, more rapidly, she pointed out three more of them, “Harper, Annie, Cindy!”

All of the vampires exploded into motion at that. Buffy had the big one staked before he even got up, two of the other three went for Gwen, and one ran for the door. Harper and Cindy flinched back, hiding behind furniture, but Annie tried to get in the way of one of the rogues and they scuffled on the ground. Buffy saw Harmony tackling the one who tried to run out of the corner of her eye, and so she quickly charged the last one and staked her.

After that, it was just a matter of cleanup, though she let Harmony finish her scuffle with the other girl and do the staking herself. She was coming along nicely, and Buffy was pleased she could deal with the average minion on her own already. Harmony gave her fangy smile before forcing game face back down, and then Buffy turned to the knot of five survivors.

“Any questions?”

* * *

“I was mostly just, you know, acting on instinct,” Buffy said. She was sitting on her own desk, nervously kicking her feet against it. This wasn’t a time for chairs.

“Well, your approach was certainly unconventional,” Giles said hesitantly, cleaning his glasses. “In my younger days I knew of a couple such establishments, often in the fetid conditions you describe. I wouldn’t think you’d concern yourself with them, but I suppose our circumstances are anything but normal.”

Buffy’s eyes widened, “Don’t tell me you, umm, Giles,-”

“Heavens no!” he said, disturbed, “But some people in my circles did. They aren’t safe, but tend to be safer than one would imagine, and at the end of the day, the ‘patrons’ there are willing victims. I didn’t realize there was one in Sunnydale, but I wouldn’t have directed your attention to it even if I did. They’re a rather low priority, in the scheme of things.”

“Do you think I was too nasty with them then? Or too nice? I was kind of torn between sympathy and an urge to stake them all and burn the place down.”

“I don’t think anyone of note has tried to be, ah, ‘nice’ to them before,” Giles said. “But I’m not sure if it matters that much either way. If you think they can become a source of income and information, I trust you to keep them under control.”

“Well, I think you handled it the right way,” Anya piped up, after Giles finished. She was the other person Buffy had decided to get an opinion from, and she was much more confident. “It’s easy for humans to make mistakes dealing with vampire psychology, but you did just the right thing.”

Buffy and Giles just stared at her, and she took that as permission to launch into lecture mode. “So, normally, this whole vampire brothel idea would be a fool’s errand. Vampire instincts constantly push them to kill and destroy, just like a human’s instincts push them to have sex and make money.”

“They didn’t seem especially destructive?” Buffy ventured. “Like, most vampires are all ‘Grrr, Argh’ right out of the grave, but they were pretty subdued in comparison.”

“That’s because the sort of vampires that end up in those places are beaten down and demoralized,” Anya said authoritatively. “They’re like sick little puppies, all sniffly and pathetic. But if you ever improve their conditions and let them recover some dignity, soon they’ll just get aggressive and murderous again, no matter what they’re like at first.”

“That would seem to be an argument that what Buffy’s doing is a terrible idea,” Giles argued. “If she keeps them defended against the other rabble, and the conditions there improve, won’t they just go down that same path?”

“They would, except for the other primary feature of vampire psychology.” Anya paused dramatically, having fun being the center of attention. “If you expose a group of vampires to a bigger, badder demon, they’ll usually get all subservient and it overrides their normal instincts. That’s why every serious monster in the underworld worthy of the name has a bunch of vampire minions, they just sort of glom on, like groupies.”

“Wait, but-” Buffy started, but Anya interrupted her.

“I mean, I know you’re not actually a demon, but I doubt the vampires really get that, deep down in their guts. You’re way stronger than they are, you demanded tribute, and then you killed half of them just because you felt like it.” Anya nodded. “Totally normal for the type of demon that gets vampire groupies.”

“Harmony…” Giles began, trailing off.

“That’s why I’m pretty confident.” Anya said. “Buffy put the same whammy on her. She shows all the signs of growing up to be a big important vampire, but despite that not the slightest whiff of normal rogue vampire behavior. And Buffy didn’t even have to terrorize her with random acts of violence!”

“Wouldn’t that cast some doubt on your whole theory though?” Buffy was still a little worried she’d been out of line, despite herself. “Like, Harmony didn’t need to be terrorized, so maybe I didn’t need to go all murder rampage on the suck joint?”

“I mean, Harmony was already on your side before she died in a big violent battle where you defeated an Old One,” Anya said. “Maybe that proved your murder chops to her demon?”

Buffy frowned, not liking the implications of all this vampire groupie stuff, and decided to bite another bullet. “My powers have been kind of weird lately.” She hadn’t told anyone but Giles about the KILL vision, or more recently, the Wilkins dreams, but Anya’s well of esoteric demon knowledge was too tempting to ignore. “I haven’t told anyone besides Giles because it’s mondo creepy.”

“Oh! This is where I’m supposed to promise not to gossip and then I tell everyone behind your back, right? Kidding!” Buffy and Giles just stared at her again, and Anya pouted. “Nobody appreciates my jokes.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, but decided she might as well keep explaining, “When I was fighting the dragon last week she almost got in my head once, but I had this vision that kicked her out and told me to KILL with lots of drama and special effects. Plus, I’ve been having Wilkins in my slayer dreams ever since Graduation, and we’ve been doing this whole weird conversations with dead people thing.”

“So you’re worried he like, what, used his freaky Old One powers to like, jump into your head as he died?” Anya asked. “And now he’s slowly taking control of you by tempting you over into some kind of evil demonic pact?”

“Umm,” Buffy said.

“As far as I know, that’s totally impossible!” Anya said brightly. “Old Ones had all kinds of weird unfathomable powers, but they also tended to get pretty rooted into whatever paradigm they used. Wilkins needed a hundred years to coax Olvikan into joining with himself, it wouldn’t just stick onto you in a spray of exploded gore.”

“While that’s reassuring, if a bit unnecessarily graphic,” Giles said. “Can you think of any other explanation for what’s happening to Buffy? She’s also mentioned that her Slayer reflexes have become much keener since the vision.” Buffy nodded at that. It’d made a lot of things easier in the past week, but it was also a constant troubling reminder.

Anya pursed her lips. “Well, maybe whatever powers the Slayer is just happy with a job well done? Buffy has killed a large number and variety of bad things. It’s only natural that extra effort in the workplace be rewarded.”

“What does that have to do with Wilkins though?” Buffy asked.

Anya shrugged. “Probably nothing? I mean, even in the demon world, dead is usually dead. You blew him into a million pieces, it’d be silly to be afraid he was like, lying in wait as he regenerated or something. It’s not like he’s talking to you when you’re awake, right? People have all kinds of weird dreams. I had a dream just last night about Willow feeding me jello, that doesn’t mean she’s controlling my mind. I hope.” She frowned a bit, looking pensive.

Buffy sighed. She’d been hoping for something more concrete than that, but at least Anya had put her worries about the ‘suck joint’ (she was going to need to name it something less eww) mostly to rest.

* * *

Later that day, Buffy was just leaving her office when she ran into Cynthia, holding out an classy looking vellum envelope.

Buffy slowed down, not spooked by slayer instincts, but teenager ones instead. “That looks scary.”

Cynthia gave her a flat look, and explained, holding the open envelope out to her. “You’ve been cordially invited to the Sunnydale Country Club tomorrow. You don’t have to go, but I think it’d be a very good idea.”

Buffy had heard of the country club, but never been out there before; it was treated pretty exclusively, and they didn’t like bumping elbows with people from the other side of the tracks. The Cordettes’ families were all members, along with a lot of the richer people around town. Despite the bad neighborhoods and chronically low property values, there were a lot of wealthy families in the Sunnydale area too.

She got the invitation out and gave it a leery eye. “This is pretty vague. Why are they inviting me now? What do people even do at country clubs? Do the wives all stand around gossiping while their husbands play golf?”

“More or less, to the second,” Cynthia said. “As for the first, you are in fact the mayor of their town, and thus a fairly important person for them to get to know. You’ll probably be offered a complimentary membership, and it’s likely they’ll try to wheedle various concessions out of you, but I think this is mostly just an action to ‘feel you out’, as it were.”

“Concessions? What kind of things do rich people even want?” Buffy was a little alarmed. “Are they going to try to buy the town out from under us or anything nefarious like that?”

“To an extent, yes, but it’s less of a serious concern than you might think,” Cynthia hedged.

“Mayor Wilkins made it a policy to keep some rather labyrinthine zoning laws on the books to support his various demonic constituents and foster areas that might serve their interests. With the way property values in Sunnydale have risen since you’ve become active here, they might hope you’re receptive to some changes he stood firm against.”

“Is there any real issue with that?” Buffy asked.

“Well, some of the properties may react rather … poorly to new construction, for various reasons, but Richard played his cards close to the chest, so it’s hard to know which ones, or how violently,” Cynthia said. “It’s a bit of a risk, but then again, their support might be invaluable for your upcoming election, and it would probably be good for the city’s economy in the long term.”

Buffy felt a little adrift, and was happy to at least be getting guidance enough to understand what the issues were before being shoved in the deep end. “Is that it, or are there other things too?”

“It’s difficult to say.” Cynthia tilted her hand back and forth. “It’s also possible they’re concerned about the high school reconstruction or the new police chief, or they might be too cautious with you to bring up much of anything at all. You’re an unknown element for them, so they’ll have to improvise.”

“Unknown is good,” Buffy said. “They’re an unknown element for me too.”

“There is one more decision,” Cynthia said gravely, leading Buffy to a closet and opening it up. Inside was a set of golf clubs. “Their vague invitation was in part due to having no idea how you would present yourself. Normally, a young lady mayor would be expected to come dressed for a formal lunch.”

“However,” Cynthia continued, “even amongst the mundane residents of the town, your rather active stance in fighting crime is already widely known. They might equally expect you to come equipped and ready for their prime mode of athletic competition, acting like ‘one of the boys’. Being careful not to offend, the obvious move for them was to leave the choice up to you.”


	25. S3.5E5: This is Sunnydale III

“Are you sure we need to shop at April Fools for this?” Buffy said quietly. “I’m not exactly paying myself a six-figure salary.” Once Buffy had decided against golf, Cynthia had gone into a whirlwind setting things up, and Buffy soon found herself on an expedition to the classiest clothing store in Sunnydale.

“Absolutely. A purely social setting is one where you won’t be able to cover for any … eccentricities in your situation with your other skills, so you cannot allow any vector of attack.” Cynthia matched Buffy’s volume as they walked down Maple Court, but there wasn’t any give in her tone. “As for the financial considerations, your thrift is admirable but it must have limits. Even were the situation much more dire, this is a necessary expense, it’ll simply be covered on the city account.”

“But, I mean, ultimately, it’s a dress for me right? Wouldn’t it be kind of corrupt to put it on Sunnydale’s tab when it’s going into my closet?” Buffy had kind of assumed she’d wear something nice, but something she already had. Or maybe like, something she got at the mall. Not something that cost more than what a normal person made in a week.

“Well, it’s not like you aren’t bringing money in,” Vanessa argued from her other side. “That little side project you took over isn’t going to solve all our problems, but I venture it’ll buy you a few fancy dresses.”

Buffy had been a little surprised at the lack of objections to her foray into vampire pimping, but even beyond Anya and her total lack of applicable morality, nobody had really batted an eye. She got the impression Wilkins’ old employees had seen much worse, and even Xander had been nonplussed, though in a mocking way, when she explained what she’d done and how she wanted the cameras set up. She wondered if being exposed to Harmony so much had softened him up a bit; she’d been expecting him to tell her she should go back and kill the rest of them too.

It was already getting a bit late as they arrived at April Fools, and Buffy had worried about their hours, but Cynthia had called ahead and assured her they had plenty of time. No other customers were in the store as they walked in, but Buffy assumed that was normal for such a high-end place; people could hardly be shopping there every day.

Buffy hardly had time to take the place in before she was greeted by the redheaded manager, “Ms Summers!” She scooted over to the three of them in a way that would’ve almost been hustling if it was less refined. “I’m so glad to have you at our store. Ms. Danvers gave me your measurements in advance, and I have a delightful selection all ready for you!” Buffy noticed someone flipping the sign on the door to ‘CLOSED’ before being shuffled off deeper into the store.

Buffy had thought she’d understood shopping; you fish through racks of clothing and search for sales and maybe, with proper application of blood, sweat, and tears, you could manage to find nice things at a good price. What happened over the next hour was a totally foreign experience, with not only the manager but multiple shop attendants presenting her with all sorts of options, moving her all around into different poses, and even out to the back where the lightning was different. This wasn’t the kind of store with price tags, and money was never mentioned at any point.

Cynthia argued for a reserved, mature style that would make her look more adult. Vanessa wanted her to look adult too, but in a very different way; she said that Buffy should ‘use it while she’s got it.’ Buffy did mostly agree with Cynthia, in theory… but it was also the middle of June, and slayer powers didn’t include air conditioning, so she ended up with a sort of skimpy black number. She liked the shiny belts.

After they left, Buffy wanted to make sure they had their schedules straight for the next day. “So, when are we going to head out to this place? You never said exactly when the lunch was.”

“It’s at two,” Cynthia said. “It’s a bit later than normal, but they were the ones who suggested it. I think they may have gotten some inkling of your usual schedule and tried to be accommodating.”

Vanessa zeroed in on another thing Buffy said though. “It won’t be a ‘we’ going. You’re going to have to fly solo on this one, or maybe bring one of your girlfriends.”

Buffy frowned. “Didn’t you say you were a member yourself?”

“Oh, I certainly could go with you, but it’d be a terrible idea,” she replied. “People could take it to mean you were just my puppet. Enough people already might be thinking that after we brought my nephew on, no need to stir the pot anymore.”

Buffy hadn’t realized that might happen at all, but it did seem like something she’d want to avoid. “Well, sure, but what about you, Cynthia?”

“It wouldn’t be as dire, but the age disparity is still a little severe,” she hedged. “You’re going to be seeing some people you know from school there with their parents, you don’t want to bring anyone much older than yourself or you’ll cause unconscious comparisons.”

There was no way she was going to force Willow into this; it wasn’t her scene at all, and she was busy enough already. Harmony was an even worse idea; they might be able to navigate the sun somehow, but it’d be a constant threat for her and fledglings had a tendency to go up in smoke from the slightest thing. She’d been way too busy to give her much thought lately, but Buffy idly wondered how Cordelia was doing; she’d have been perfect for this.

* * *

As Buffy watched Cynthia’s car speed away, she readied herself for social battle. Not only was she in her new dress, but she’d gotten hair, nails, the works, all this morning. It was enough that if the lunch hadn’t been late, she’d have had to show up to it sleep deprived, but at least she was looking good.

In contrast to the woods surrounding the area, the drive leading up to Sunnydale’s eponymous country club was lined with palm trees and exotic ferns. The club itself was dominated by its golf course, but also included a sprawling installation of open buildings reminiscent of Sunnydale High (before it exploded.) It was a world of difference in presentation from the nearby Sunnydale Lodge that Xander’s uncle Rory went to, and really drove home the level of income disparity in the town. Even though the inner city was a slum and plagued by ‘violent crime’, better neighborhoods and even mansions lined the outskirts, with the rich capitalizing on the low property taxes that Wilkins had enforced.

The large doors at the entrance to the front building were thrown open, and when Buffy entered she was greeted by a subdued host and led down a series of hallways. The club had all sorts of old and exotic looking works of art decorating it, and she wondered if Giles and her mother had gotten to inspect this collection yet. Normally slaying interrupting a party would be a drag, but with this building up into such a big event she thought it might almost be a relief to get back on that sort of familiar ground.

Eventually, they reached an open courtyard, and even as she was approaching, she heard a voice echo over a loudspeaker even as she was approaching. “And now, the Sunnydale Country Club proudly presents today’s guest of honor, Interim Mayor Buffy Summers!” Somehow she hadn’t expected this event to be quite so Buffy-centric, but then again, Cynthia had made that comment about the timing.

She emerged into the bright sunlight to a polite applause and massive crowd of well dressed people. April Fools hadn’t failed her though, and the dark outfit made her stand out from the brighter summer styles in a good way. She hoped. There was a flurry of people greeting her, but one older man went so far as to shake her hand and stopped to make a bigger impression. “I’m Jason Kendall, and I’d like to thank you for the opportunity you’ve given my daughter over the past few weeks.”

There was a much younger woman by his side, and she wondered if Harmony’s parents (or was that maybe her older sister?) even knew vampires existed, much less that their daughter was one. “It’s been my pleasure, really. She’s such a go-getter, learning everything on the job.” Buffy gave a broad smile, and tried to keep her handshake between firm and broken-hand territory.

Either she succeeded or Jason didn’t want to make anything of it. “She’s always been a talented girl, but she was so unmotivated in high school. I didn’t know what she was going to do with her life, but it was a huge relief to see her landing on her feet, jumping right into politics. You’ve got my vote, and if you ever need any help in the investment sector, just give me a call.” He excused himself as the rest of the crowd kept flowing forward, and his probably-wife gave her a little smile as she was swept away as well.

* * *

Buffy had been making nice with most of the guests, but they’d avoided the big ticket questions so far. A Mr. Gervais had cornered her up against a big flowery hedge though, and he didn’t seem to be in the mood for softball questions. “A little young for the job, aren’t ya? Pretty strange for a slip of a thing just out of high school to end up the mayor, if you ask me. And a lot of people do!” He was an older man all bald up top, and he kept hold of his cane as if he’d fall down without it. Buffy had seen him move out of the corner of her eye though, and wasn’t convinced by the helpless act.

“Well, after the gang attack at graduation, nobody could find Mayor Wilkins, or most of the town government really. I and the rest of my class had the problems Sunnydale faces thrust… right into our faces, and so we did something about it.” Buffy really wished she’d gotten her lines for these half-truths a little more polished. “Nobody else was stepping up, and if we hadn’t been around in the last few weeks to put down the crime wave all kinds of damage could’ve been done.”

“Well, I’m not saying that you and your friends haven’t done some good. Not saying that exactly.” What he was saying, on the other hand, wasn’t too clear, but Buffy guessed that was pretty much intentional. “But are you really in control? I’ve known that old biddy Vanessa for over sixty years, and she was a smooth operator even back when we were sticking gum in each other’s hair! She even managed to get that nephew of hers my buddy Bobby’s old job!”

“Ms. Waters has been a world of help to me and to the town, especially considering she was the only one on the city council that even bothered to see us through the crisis,” Buffy said annoyedly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not standing on my own two feet here. Bob Monroe may be a great guy (Buffy doubted that), but his police force wasn’t ready to face the realities of Sunnydale, and something had to be done.”

“We’ll see if this Matt kid is any better, I suppose,” Mr. Gervais shifted his eyes back and forth rapidly, and then changed the subject, “If you’ve got things so under control though, tell me what happened to the old Thompson mansion! Did it burn down last week? Nothing’s been in the papers about it, and I drove down there the other day, everything was just gone, as if it hadn’t been there in the first place! Damnedest thing.”

Buffy was pretty sure he was talking about Teeth’s mansion, but since it hadn’t reappeared yet from wherever it was hiding, she wasn’t sure what explanation she could peddle. “Are you sure you aren’t just misremembering where it was? Take another drive around, and it’ll probably turn up where you least expected it.”

* * *

“What does your administration plan to do with the school? People are saying the damage is extensive, and I don’t like the idea of sending my kids to Kent Prep next year.” Lauren Ditchik had accosted Buffy when she’d finally gotten to the buffet table, and her three daughters hovered behind her in varying states of interest. One of the younger two was paying close attention, while the other stared off into another part of the crowd. Buffy knew the older daughter Gwen from the class of ‘99, and the Cordette was giving her a vaguely apologetic look as nibbled at a miniature sandwich.

“We’re investigating the situation, but there’s some concern the structure of the main building is unsafe,” That was their cover story for now at least. Going forward, having the high school sitting directly on the active Hellmouth was obviously not the best situation, but completely rebuilding it somewhere else in town was going to be an expensive fiasco. Of all the annoying situations Wilkins had left her with, that seemed like the most pointless of them, however useful it had been sometimes when she was an actual high school student.

“The school has been a huge investment for the community though!” she complained. “Sunnydale doesn’t have a good private school, because Wilkins always kept Sunnydale High’s facilities tip-top and it wasn’t needed. If that lapses everything will be ruined!” Lauren’s voice was rising and now accompanied by hand gestures, and behind her Gwen just looked at the ground, dying of embarrassment.

“I promise, you won’t have to ship your kids anywhere,” Buffy said. “At the worst, the city still has middle schools for classrooms, and lots of other property too. All the teachers are still on contract. Science lab might be a little improvised, but the whole school system isn’t going to get sucked into hell or anything.” She probably shouldn’t have slipped that last bit in, but panicking over a building seemed a little petty considering what she dealt with every week.

“I hope so,” she sighed dramatically and stalked off, followed by the twins. Gwen stayed behind though, offering Buffy one of the mini-sandwiches.

“Sorry mom’s freaking out,” Gwen said. “If it’s any consolation, she sort of just bounces from one artificial crisis to the next, by next month she’ll be worried about saving the whales or something.” She took a bite, and then gave Buffy a look up and down. “Nice duds, by the way.”

“Thanks!” Buffy started another fake smile automatically, but managed to abort it in time. Gwen and her weren’t exactly close, but she didn’t deserve to be treated with the same act Buffy’d been cultivating all afternoon. “It is kind of a thorny issue, to be fair. Let’s just say there was more wrong with the site of the high school than Wilkins turning into a giant snake on it.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You and your friends always do.” She paused for a second, before asking, “How’s Harmony been? She, ah, didn’t mention it exactly the last time I talked to her, but I heard a rumor she was all…” she used her index fingers to represent fangs.

“Surprisingly OK,” Buffy stated. At Gwen’s searching look, she clarified, “She’s safe enough to be around. That’s totally an exception and not the rule dealing with situations like that, though.” That reminded Buffy of who she’d been thinking about earlier. “What about Cordy? Have you heard from her since she left for greener pastures?”

“Total black hole,” Gwen said. “I think Aura wheedled a phone number out of her somehow, but she told me all she gets is the answering machine.”

Buffy furrowed eyebrows in concern, “Do you think she’s alright?”

“I can’t imagine anything could’ve happened to her,” Gwen said, not looking as confident as she was trying to be. “I mean, she’s Cordy. She’d have been the toughest girl in school if it wasn’t for you. She’s probably just busy on a movie set or something and doesn’t want to be distracted by the likes of us anymore.”

“Maybe,” Buffy didn’t think Cordy was the type to ignore her friends when things were going well. “I’ll try to check up on her anyway.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Gwen said, abandoning her facade of unconcern. “But how?”

“I’ve got an idea or two,” Buffy said. The people she’d inherited at city hall did a pretty good job navigating mundane parts of the system, and if all else failed she could give Willow yet another job.

They munched amicably for another few minutes before the loudspeaker interrupted; Jason Kendall was up at the podium. “We’ve all had a chance to chat with Sunnydale’s new leading lady in person, but what would a rally be without a speech? Ms Summers, come on up and show everyone what a great mayor you can be!” Buffy had been unaware that this had morphed into a campaigning event, but there was nothing to be done about it now. It was clear that Jason was trying to help, but she was going to need to improvise a topic to focus her speech on.


	26. S3.5E5: This is Sunnydale IV

As she stepped up to the podium, and saw the milling crowd, Buffy was pretty nervous, though she was trying not to show it. This wasn’t a hostile audience, but they weren’t her natural supporters either; this wouldn’t be quite as laid back as accepting her award at the prom had been. She needed to say her piece, but it had to be tailored to the audience.

She briefly considered making some promises about friendly zoning and new construction, but without a better understanding of the situation she didn’t want to get into a situation where she had to either make herself a liar or endanger the town. A few extra tax dollars weren’t worth the casualties that could cause, even if she could probably clean up the mess eventually.

She reached the small stage, and she’d run out of time to think. She’d just have to try to speak from the heart and see how things went. “Hi everyone. First I want to thank you all for inviting me here, and throwing this wonderful party. It’s been a hectic month for all of us, and I was honestly pretty happy to have a chance to just girl-out for a day.” That got a few titters, but she could tell the crowd was still pretty unsure about her.

“I first came to Sunnydale three years ago. There have been some rough times between then and now, but looking back, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I made real friends here, I helped real people. I found a real home. We have our problems, but there’s … something special about this town, that you can’t find anywhere else in America.” She neglected to say what it was.

“And a big part of why this town is what it is is due to the tireless actions of Richard Wilkins the Third. And the Second, and the First. They all ran the town in a certain way, and a lot of people are probably afraid I’m going to come in and change that all up, that I want to just make Sunnydale into another LA suburb. That’s not what I’m trying to do at all. I’ve lived in LA too many times. I’m all done with that.”

“Some of you in the crowd probably know that Mayor Wilkins and I didn’t always get along.” She got more knowing looks at that than she expected. “But whatever we disagreed about, I know that he loved this town, and he was strong enough to defend it when it needed to be protected. That’s how I ended up being interim mayor; I was defending City Hall from a gang attack, and things just sort of snowballed from there.” This actually got a bit of a reaction; what happened last week had gotten a lot more publicized than the chaos right after graduation.

“I feel like there’s this expectation these days everyone has that kids are going to grow up, fly off to college, and never look back. I for one am happy that’s not what I’m doing.” Take that, Mom. “Even before I was mayor, I already had a role in the community here. I knew people, I helped people, people helped me.” There was just a little bit of a tear in her eye, thinking of what Willow had given up to stay. “My friends didn’t do that either. Those are the kind of friends you make in Sunnydale, the people who fight for you all the way to the grave! I just hope that while I’m mayor, more people will have a chance to make friends like that here. Thank you everybody.”

The round of applause she got wasn’t deafening, but it wasn’t quiet either, and the Cordettes were all on her side at least. She would take it. Jason greeted her as she descended back into the crowd. “You really knocked that out of the park! Already feeling confident about August 31st?”

The date for the emergency election had been confirmed this week, and Harmony’s dad was apparently counting the days already. Buffy was more leery, but didn’t want to show it, “I’m just trying to do the job that’s in front of me. If we can even get there without any more disasters then I’ll be happy.”

A new voice responded from behind, “That’s a good attitude to have, too many politicians don’t care about anything but campaigning these days.” Turning to look, it was a distinguished gentleman in a suit, a little beyond Jason’s age. “Lawrence Truman’s the name. Glad to meet you Buffy.”

They shook hands, and Jason spoke up, “Larry and I have been friends for ages, and if I don’t miss my guess he’s impressed enough to have a proposition for you.”

Buffy raised her eyes questioningly, and Lawrence explained. “I’m a lawyer by trade, but I grew up in Sunnydale from sprog size, and I’ve always wanted to participate more in the city. We’ve got a spat of absences on the city council, and my caseload isn’t what it used to be, so I was thinking of running. I liked what you had to say up there, so I’d like to do it under your auspices.”

“Oh. I’m flattered.” Buffy was a little shellshocked, but in retrospect she probably should’ve been ready for some political wheeling and dealing. “What do auspices usually entail, exactly?”

“I was thinking we’d coordinate campaigns and messaging,” Lawrence said. “I’d run downballot from you, and when we both get elected, you’ve got another friendly face on there. Honestly, with how put together you seem to be I’m surprised you don’t have people chomping at the bit already.”

“Well, there’s my colleague Vanessa of course, already I mean, but I don’t really have anyone else lined up right now. Everyone I know is already pretty busy, honestly.” Now that Buffy thought about it, it sounded like it might be just the sort of thing up Giles’ alley. But four open seats was plenty of space anyway.

“I’m not surprised,” he replied. “With all the hubbub in this town since Wilkins disappeared, you must be working your tails off to hold it all in one piece. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of stuff that’s flying around the rumor mill, if half of it’s true I don’t know when you find the time to sleep!”

“Now, now Larry, let’s not bring any of that up,” Jason said. Buffy was curious what some of these rumors were, but decided she probably didn’t want to know right now. It’d been a long enough lunch already.

“Of course, of course. Jason always says I think with my mouth. In any case, let’s get something to eat. You look like you could use some more meat on those bones,” Both of them chuckled, and Buffy warily let her new ‘politics smile’ come to the fore.

* * *

“Well, that’s probably a stroke of luck, on the whole,” Vanessa said. “Larry’s pretty well known around the ‘good side’ of town, just having his name on ballot will get some of the lazy do-nothings out and voting for you. He can be a bit of a trial though, I hope you managed to tolerate his antics.”

Buffy was debriefing in the conference room with Vanessa and Cynthia, making sense of everything that had happened at the lunch party. Harmony was there too, in case she could shed any extra light on her dad’s motivations. This was the kind of gossip her Mom would’ve loved too, and Buffy felt a little bad for not even telling her about it, but things had been pretty tense between them ever since last week.

“He wasn’t really that bad. OK, it was kind of bad. But he umm, seems to mean well. I hope. He did bring up some rumors though, and I got the sense a lot of things were kind of being unspoken.” Buffy said uncertainly.

The three other people in the room cringed a little and exchanged looks. There was a silent moment of communication between them, and Cynthia ended up being the one to talk. “With all the disruption as of late, even the mundane residents of the town have required some sort of explanation. Even Sunnydale Syndrome, as you like to call it, has its limits.” She paused again before continuing. “Lacking any coherent one from an official or even unofficial source, the rumor mill has created its own.”

“And?” Buffy asked, between annoyed and apprehensive.

“Well, as you might expect there is a large degree of variance in the claims.” Buffy whirled her hands, signalling Cynthia to get on with it. “But the general thrust is that Richard Wilkins the Third was some kind of figure in organized crime, and that you were the leader of one of Sunnydale’s prominent gangs.”

“What? I thought that was just Xander’s uncle being weird! Does everyone think I’m on steroids too?” Buffy demanded.

“Forget the old people, half the school thought you were on steroids before stuff got all obvious at Graduation,” Harmony interjected.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Vanessa tried to calm her down. “My nephew’s told me that your positive relationship with the police department has gone a long way towards soothing things over. None of his cops have a bad word to say about you.”

“Wait, so is there anything else to it? I don’t see how it makes much sense on it’s own,” Buffy said.

“The prominent guess is that Mayor Wilkins was running some kind of drug ring, with you as his primary distributor,” Cynthia continued. “His death at graduation and the attacks on the police station and hospital have been explained as the actions of rival gangs, and your business relationship with him as the reason for your succession to his position.”

“Who talks about this?” Buffy asked. “I don’t hear people talking about this.”

“You mainly hang with people in the know already,” Harmony said. “And the type of people at the country club only say nasty things behind your back, even if they aren’t terrified of you.”

“It really isn’t that bad,” Vanessa kept arguing. “There’s a significant group that thinks it’s all just malicious rumormongering. You don’t exactly look the part of a savage gang leader who could moonlight as a pit fighter.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Cynthia said, “the overwhelming sentiment, even considering this, is that you’re a stabilizing influence. Just stepping into the old mayor’s place, as it were.”

“Fine. I guess there’s nothing we can do about it, and it isn’t like people haven’t spread rumors about me before. Just have to grin and bear it.” Buffy just closed her eyes and breathed. After taking her moment, she said, “Harm, what does your dad actually think? He seemed so friendly, but I don’t even know anymore I guess. Does he even know you’re a vampire?”

She pouted, “It’d be this big awkward conversation, I just don’t want to have it. He’s on team full denial right now, he probably just thinks you were sleeping with Wilkins and then gave me a job for being cool, or something.”

“Eww.” Buffy made a spectacular face. “Eww, eww, eww, suddenly I find myself embracing gang life and steroids.”


	27. S3.5E6: Cordelia Chase, and Where to Find Her I

** S3.5E6: Cordelia Chase, and Where to Find Her **

“Hi, this is Cordelia Chase. I’m not in right now, but if you leave the details of the part, I’ll definitely call you back.” There was a pause, and then the machine beeped.

“Hi, it’s Buffy.” She struggled for a moment thinking how to summarize the last three weeks, and failed. “Kind of a lot has happened, but I was wondering how you were doing. Call me back at this number.” She hung up, troubled.

Before resorting to anything more elaborate, Buffy had just gotten the number from Aura and called it from her office, but as expected that didn’t produce much in the way of results. According to Aura Cordy had given her the number over the phone the day after she’d arrived in LA, but they hadn’t gotten in contact since.

She should probably just wait. Leave it alone. She could just be really busy, or maybe she had some reason to be screening her calls. It just… didn’t seem like Cordelia though. She knew from experience that LA could change people, but it usually took longer than a couple days. She gave into temptation and punched in the code for Cynthia on her office phone.

“At your service, Mayor Summers.” Somehow she always picked up on the first ring.

“Can you like, look up the person a phone number is attached to? And the address?” Buffy asked.

“Of course,” Cynthia said. “If you would just?”

Buffy gave her the phone number, and Cynthia told her she’d be right back with her and hung up. She twiddled her fingers nervously. Noticing the blinds were closed, she pulled them open, revealing main street outside, still well lit by the setting sun. Before too much longer though, Cynthia called her back.

She didn’t waste any time. “The number’s unlisted. It might be intentional, or it might just not have existed by December last year.”

Buffy tapped her forehead, feeling a little dumb for expecting Codelia’s number to be in the yellow pages or whatever it was already. It’s not like they were shipping them out every week. After a pause that Buffy didn’t fill, Cynthia ventured, “Perhaps I could be of more help if I knew your exact objective?”

“Yes. Sorry, I was just trying to track down my friend, Cordelia Chase,” Buffy felt a little embarrassed to be using city resources for something totally personal. “She moved to LA to become an actress last month and nobody’s heard from her in weeks, all I could get was that number.”

“I might be able to find something, but it could take a bit of time,” she hedged. “It’s possible that the Chief of Police has resources that I lack, though.”

“That’s a good idea, I’ll give Matt a call too. Thanks,” Buffy said.

“I’m always glad to help with anything you need,” Cynthia replied.

Buffy hung up the phone and reached for her radio, dialing Matt’s sequence with the ease of an expert. The radio already felt more right in her hand than phone these days. “Matt, anything going on today?”

“We’re still processing some of the fallout from that bust you gave us, but it’s pretty open and shut,” Matt said. “It was nice to get a win in the papers after how things started, that’s for sure. You don’t have any more tips for me do you?”

Buffy hadn’t really considered the media fallout from her impromptu test, but she was happy it was good. “I’m the one looking for some info today. Do the police have ways of finding people out of town? Looking up where landlines go?”

“We can put out an APB to a specific area, yeah,” Matt answered, curiously. “As for the phones, if they aren’t in the yellow pages we need to hassle the company about it, and we probably couldn’t get anything until tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to get her in trouble or anything,” Buffy backpedaled. “It’s just Cordelia Chase went to LA a few weeks ago, and she hasn’t been picking up her number lately. It’s probably nothing, but-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt said. “I’ll rattle a few branches and see what I can get anything, keep it all on the downlow.”

But before the conversation could end, Buffy impulsively asked another question, “Matt, one more thing. The rumors spreading around about me, you guys have been hearing a lot of them?”

“Was wondering when you’d find out about those,” Matt said. “I told my aunt that we should just get out with it, but she’s fussy about things like that.” He paused. “Look, the guys on the force, I know you and them weren’t always on the level the last few years, but there isn’t anyone here who doesn’t appreciate what you did for us over the last couple weeks or what you done for this town. They all know the deal now, even if they didn’t before, nobody thinks you got anything, or err, had anything going on.”

“That’s reassuring. It can get to you, being surrounded by people and having no idea what they’re thinking,” Buffy said.

“That’s politics. Have a good one, Mayor.” He hung up. Buffy frowned, probably worrying a little more than such a flippant comment warranted.

Was this the direction her life was going in now? Cozying up to annoying people like Larry, keeping Harmony’s undeadness secret behind her friendly dad’s back, and letting vampire prostitutes roam free just to balance the budget? All while people talked behind her back about drug smuggling, or God, sleeping with Wilkins? She knew that by any objective metric she’d done pretty well the past few days, but she was feeling pretty scummy about it.

It was the kind of thing she really felt like talking to her mother about, if she and her mother were really talking anymore. She couldn’t pretend that she wouldn’t be judged and ranted at, or that her mom would actually have any relevant information to make these decisions, or even that she would be sober for more than the first ten minutes of it. But there’d been something cathartic about being able to get things off her chest with her in the past year, something she’d been missing ever since she became the slayer, and it felt like she was losing that again.

Matt had said that it wasn’t likely he’d get anything until tomorrow, and this whole little investigation of hers was maybe fifty percent an excuse to avoid going home at a reasonable time tonight. Maybe she should just bite the bullet, have it out. If things got too bad she could just blame her influence for being fair to the vampire whores, that oughta stump her.

Buffy closed the blinds again, and meaninglessly tidied things up in the office to delay the inevitable another few minutes. But just as she was about to open up the door, she heard a knock on it, and swung it open immediately. Ian and Cynthia were outside; Ian was a little spooked, but Cynthia was as unflappable as always.

Cynthia was quiet, looking at Ian, who eventually managed to start speaking, “Ah, Miss Mayor, I think I might have a lead.”

Buffy waved him along, still standing in the door, and he continued, “I have a cousin who works in Hollywood. I called him up and he’s going to a big talent mixer tonight; he was able to sneak a peek at the guest list and Cordelia Chase is on it.”

“Oh! That’s a relief,” Buffy said. “Does she do stuff like this often?” Cordelia probably wouldn’t be invited to things like that if she was really in trouble, though it was still weird that she wasn’t answering calls.

“Well, I described her from the picture in the yearbook, and he thinks he saw her at one a week ago but he isn’t sure,” he answered.

“Huh. Well, it would be nice to see her,” Buffy was mostly arguing with herself. Even if Cordy was probably OK, gossiping with her about her Hollywood adventures sounded more fun than going home to Mom right now.

“I could get us in,” Ian volunteered hesitantly. “The Mayor of Sunnydale is a pretty prestigious position in the area, my cousin could pull some strings to get us tickets. It starts soon, but we could just show up a little late. He says everyone does that in Hollywood anyway.”

Buffy was still all dolled up from her adventure at the country club today. It would almost be criminal to let an opportunity like this go to waste. She’d already delayed the thing with her mom for over a week, surely another day wouldn’t make any difference. “Yeah! Let’s go. It’ll be kind of nice not being the center of attention for once.”

Cynthia raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t comment.


	28. S3.5E6: Cordelia Chase, and Where to Find Her II

Buffy watched wistfully as a small group of motorcycles passed them by, speeding down the highway. Maneuverable and fast and open to the roaring wind, she was sure that was just the thing for her. A bike cost a lot more than a pretty dress though, so she’d resisted the temptation of designating it another city expense. So far.

She was a little frustrated at how slowly Ian was driving, but she held back from showing it. Mostly. After all, it was his car, and he’d gotten the tickets and figured everything out, so it wouldn’t really be fair to complain, or even to just take over his Subaru. The worst part was that she was pretty sure he would let her if she tried, and that’d just feel wrong. She fidgeted, playing with her unbuckled seatbelt as the world sedately passed them by.

At least Anya seemed to be enjoying herself in the backseat. “Iowa! On the red pickup over in the right lane! Now the score is five to two to one.” Xander had apparently taught her the license plate game recently, though it was probably Anya who decided that keeping score was part of it.

“So when were you two even driving on the highway recently?” Buffy asked, turning around backwards in her seat to sit on her knees and look at Anya.

“Oh, he took me down to Oxnard after we finished up on Tuesday,” Anya replied. “His car was very impressive, and we used some of our hard-earned dollars to partake of their goods and services.”

“What sorts of deals did they have?” Buffy wondered if she would have to go shopping out there sometime.

“They had a much larger selection of sex toys than Sunnydale has available, for one.” Ian sputtered at Anya’s brazen statement, though he did keep tight control of the car. Buffy’s eyebrows raised a bit, but after dealing with the suck house oversharing by Anya didn’t seem like as big of a deal. She’d still taunt Xander about it later though. “Maybe you should do something about that as mayor. I can’t imagine that all the demon residents of the city have as easy a time shopping in Oxnard as we did.”

“I’ll keep it under advisement,” Buffy said neutrally. She was still a little concerned about fairness to the less dangerous demons living in Sunnydale, but somehow she doubted that sex toy availability was a major concern. Looking to change the subject, she asked, “So, who are all these people you know in LA? You had a kitten … dealer here too right?”

“LA, and Hollywood in particular, is a hotspot for scorned women these days. I’ve probably granted more wishes there in the past hundred years than in most countries!” Anya launched into her lecturing mode, always happy to talk about her bloody past. “A lot of them are really angry too. Usually when I’m granting some know-nothing a wish there’s all the ‘ahhh’ and ‘I didn’t really mean it’ and so on, but the girls in Hollywood usually don’t test the no returns policy.”

“So what, you magic some cheating husband’s intestines into exploding and it turns into gossip over coffee every other year?” Buffy was a little skeptical, but she’d learned a lot about infuriating exes in the past month.

“Most of them go for drinks instead,” Anya said. “There are a good number of demons in the industry too, they got a foot in with some SFX jobs in the early days. D’Hoffryn always encourages us to network.”

The car rattled a bit, and Buffy spun around again, returning to a normal position. “Pothole!” Ian explained. He looked a little stressed; Buffy decided maybe she shouldn’t do any more gymnastics in her seat. She wouldn’t have any trouble surviving a crash at these speeds, but Ian was a pretty normal sort of guy and probably had a hard time processing that.

Anya interrupted her internal musings, “Nebraska! I have six now. Looks like traffic coming up though.” She was probably right, as cars were starting to slow down and crowd up around them with LA lit up on the horizon. Buffy hoped it wouldn’t be too bad, but she knew better than that, having lived there so long herself.

“This party isn’t going to end too early, is it Ian? Looks like we might be later than expected.”

“My cousin actually said there’s a surge at 2AM when all the bars close, so I don’t think any degree of lateness will be a problem,” Ian said. Rather than being frustrated as the traffic slowed to a crawl, he looked a little relieved. Some people just didn’t like highway driving.

* * *

They didn’t end up getting there until almost 11, but as they’d been assured it was still a happening scene. It was a little disconcerting that they were on the list as ‘Mayor Summers and party’, but in retrospect that was probably easier to get on the list than ‘some guy’s cousin and party’. The guy in question wasn’t anywhere obvious to greet them, but Ian said he’d track him down in the crowd and they could all mingle later. Anya and Buffy shared a quick look and then split up in search of Cordelia.

She wasn’t the main focus of attention like she had been at the lunch, but she could tell she was getting looks and could tell she was the hot topic from snatches of conversation she could pick up.

“Do you think we can score some X off her? I heard-”

“-winter colors while it’s 90 outside!”

“Just keep your face on Jerry, I don’t think she’s even here as the Slayer. Don’t give her a reason and-”

“- Sunnydale. Maybe she can act too?”

“-into politics? I know people say Henderson is pretty solid in the 24th district, but she’s hotter than-”

“Don’t be a bitch Anna, she’s making it look good and you know it.”

Slayer hearing could be a combination of empowering and disappointing at times. Eventually, someone broke the ice and actually approached her though, breaking the invisible bubble around her. “Mayor Summers! I’m Will Morris, CAA. We run this shindig once a month.” He gave her a quick handshake; sort of delicate, but that was probably out of deference to her being a girl or something. “Glad to see you could make it, how’s the campaign going?”

Did people think that was all she did? The election wasn’t for over two months. “Great. I beat down the recent crime wave, so I figured I could afford to broaden my horizons a little.”

He nodded along with her deflection amicably. “It’s a good thing you did, those gangs are really getting out of control lately. Mayor Simmons is probably pissed you’re making him look bad; harder to take on crime personally at eighty than eighteen though, am I right?”

“There are advantages to youth in government,” Buffy replied.

“So what are you looking for here?” he said interestedly. “We’ve got lots of pretty faces, but finding one prettier than yours is going to be a challenge. Maybe you want to break Sunnydale into filming? I hear there’s great scenery there, if you can look past the urban decay.”

She hadn’t considered doing movies in Sunnydale, but if Anya was right it could be a job opportunity for some of the naturally challenged. “Maybe we could do a horror flick? Sunnydale definitely has a certain spooky vibe,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have thought so, but I also wouldn’t dream of arguing with you.” He handed her a card. “Anyways, have your people call my people and we’ll see if anything comes your way.”

He was about to leave, but before he was gone, Buffy asked, “Oh, and have you seen a Cordelia Chase? I went to school with her and I heard she was coming.”

“Can’t say if I have or I haven’t. Not all of these people are as important as you, Buffy, I don’t even know most of their names. Ciao.” With that, he floated back out into the crowd.

After the guy in charge had broken the ice, people were less reluctant to approach her, and she got into a few quick conversations as she stalked through the party looking for Cordelia. Her senses were sharp, but her height was a distinct disadvantage with it being so crowded, so it was taking a while to canvas the whole place. She did ask around, but Cordy’s description was average enough in this crowd that not many people remembered seeing her, and nobody who thought they had knew where she was.

Buffy was starting to be pretty sure her search was in vain after all when she got a tap on the back. “Mayor Summers, I heard you were looking for someone.”

She turned around to see a younger guy in a suit with reflective sunglasses on. “Cordelia Chase? Yea tall, wavy brown hair, dark brown eyes, freakishly perfect smile? She’s been looking for acting jobs.”

He put on a knowing expression. “I didn’t get her name, but I’m pretty sure that was her. She left a little before you came here with her boyfriend, he bought them tickets to the fight event I’m promoting.”

It didn’t sound like it’d be her thing, but football wasn’t either and Cordelia had been a cheerleader; it was plausible enough she’d do it for a hot enough date. She knew someone grasping for a sale when she saw it though, and she wasn’t convinced.

Before she could make a sassy remark however, he seemed to see it coming and continued, “For such a hallowed personage as the Mayor of Sunnydale however, tickets are on the house.” He fished a rectangular piece of felt paper out of his jacket. It was black and red with ‘XXI’ prominently displayed, and the words ‘VIP PASS’ on it along with tonight’s date and an address. “If you want to come on down to see the show, that’ll get you and your party in. The big events start soon and I’m getting a move on, hope to see you there!” With that, he gave her a wave and walked off.

Giving out a free pass had taken some of the wind out of her sails; if he wasn’t trying to sell something maybe Cordelia had gone there after all? Without any better ideas, she strolled back through the party looking for Anya and Ian. She ran into Ian first, and a similar looking guy (with a similar bald spot) about the same age was with him. He’d found his cousin, apparently.

Ian noticed her first, “Miss Mayor, this is my cousin Jeff.” Jeff’s hand felt a little cold and clammy when they shook, but it wasn’t like, vampire-grade or anything. Probably just a little unhealthy.

“Thanks for getting us into this,” Buffy said.

“It was no trouble at all, really. You could even call it negative trouble,” Jeff replied. She could tell he was a little smoother than his cousin, despite the physical resemblance. “All those stunts of yours even made a bit of a run in the LA papers, you’re the talk of the town. I could probably convince Will he owes me a favor for getting you here.”

This was the first Buffy really was aware of Sunnydale news leaking outside the town very far, but even the cover stories had gotten pretty wild in the past month and her notoriety had been making itself obvious. It felt kind of nice to be known for something else besides just being ‘The Slayer’.

She was a little eager to share what she’d found out, but didn’t want to seem rude, “So what do you do exactly? I know you work in the movie industry, but-”

“I’m a CE; that’s a creative executive. I’m the guy you go to if you want a script read and yakked about by the guys with the big bucks to make it happen,” He explained. “It’s too bad your friend is an actress and not a writer, I could’ve given her a fast track there.”

That was a good segue into bringing her up. “Actually, I got a lead on Cordy just now. Some guy said she left to see a fight with her boyfriend. I thought he was just trying to sell me on something but he gave me a free ticket.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jeff said. “You’re the hot thing right now, everyone wants you around so they can look more important. You could spend a week doing the circuit before anyone got bored of you, but I guess you probably don’t have time to land the part that would go with it.”

“I’ve got tons to do as it is,” she said. “Fourteen-year old Buffy is so spinning in her grave hearing me say that.”

They both chuckled politely, but before the conversation could continue, Anya showed up, looking a little wobbly. “I know where she went!” She gestured victoriously with her drink, managing to avoid spilling too much of it. “I talked to the bartender, and he thinks Cordelia and two other girls left right before we came in. He said they were going to a karaoke bar and I got the address!” She fished a little piece of paper out of her bra with some writing scrawled on it.

Buffy frowned, wondering what could be going on. “Someone else just told me she left with her boyfriend going to see a fight instead. Did the bartender get her name?”

“Well, no, but he was adamant she matched the description,” Anya replied. “Why, did your guy get her name?”

“I guess not,” Buffy said. Well, this was awkward.


	29. S3.5E6: Cordelia Chase, and Where to Find Her III

“This is a pretty bad neighborhood,” Anya said. “I’ve done a lot of work here over the years. This bar’s new though.”

The sign for “Caritas” was small and unassuming, hung over a dingy door and a staircase leading down underneath some apartments. Buffy was reminded a little of the environs of the suck house, but figured that as long as she went in first it should be safe enough. She wasn’t sure this was the kind of place Cordelia would ever want to go, but they were already here, so they might as well check it out.

After a skeptical look at her two companions, she opened the door and headed down. She must have rubbed up against the banister wrong though, because-

**< SANCTUARY>**

**< #(&!*^>**

**< KILL>**

She felt a static shock crawl across her skin, and could’ve sworn she saw sparks. She noticed Ian started too; he must’ve noticed it, even if Anya seemed oblivious. Buffy shook her head. “Figures a place like this would have bad wiring.”

Despite her negative opinion though, the stairs and paint cleaned up remarkably quickly as they descended, and it even ended with an expensive-looking metal detector as they emerged into the bar below. Buffy felt a little cramped going down the stairs, even though there was enough room for all three of them, but the surprising crowd as they finally emerged into the bar totally distracted her from the thought.

The bar was absolutely filled with demons! For a second, she thought this had all been some kind of trap, but on second glance none of them seemed especially ready to fight, and she even recognized a few of the less dangerous species that frequented Willy’s Place. Despite the demons though, it was still a karaoke bar; the lighting was in colorful shades of red and blue, weird pieces of art and exotic bottles of alcohol lined the walls, and a stage with tons of equipment had pride of place in the front. There was a short little goblin-looking demon on it singing something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Don’t Speak.’

There was a sizable minority in here that looked human too, so their entrance was unremarked on initially. After a moment however, she heard the whisper ‘Slayer’ start echoing around the bar. A quiet settled down over the crowd, until the demon on stage noticed he was singing to an unusually attentive crowd. After recognizing what happened, he dropped the mike and backed offstage, tripping through the curtains and leaving the ‘No Doubt’ tune to play on alone.

Before the situation could evolve any further, a green demon in a garish yellow suit approached from the bar with a broad smile on his face. “Welcome to Caritas. I’m sure you gals and guy are just here to partake of song and drink, right? There’s no need for anyone to get all unsettled. I hope.”

Buffy took a significant look around. Something inside her was on edge, and she kind of wanted to start a fight. But she quelched the urge; nobody here seemed to be doing anything wrong. “As long as nobody wants to start any trouble, that’s not what we’re looking for tonight.”

“Not even the slightest bit of it, buttercup. Totally against the rules, and there’s even a spell preventing violence here.” He gestured to a black and white sign in cursive to the side, which read ‘No weapons or violence allowed.’ “Most people come here for mystical readings or fashion advice, and I can already tell you don’t need any of the latter.” Sensing that she wasn’t going to erupt into violence, at least not immediately, the bar started to settle back into its usual chatter around them, though it didn’t regain quite the same clamor it started with.

“I was looking for an old friend actually, but I don’t think she’s here.” Buffy noticed a trio of girls over by one wall, and there was one that might possibly be mistaken for Cordelia by someone who was half-blind. “But mystical readings?”

“Oh, you’re a Deathwok, aren’t you?” Anya spoke up. “But this doesn’t look like a traditional Hunter’s Acr-”

“Well aren’t you well informed!” he interrupted. “I like to think of myself as much more modernized and fabulous than my forebears; all you have to do for me to read you is sing.”

“Oooh! I want to try!” Anya hopped in place excitedly. With no objections surfacing, she scooted up to the stage and started fiddling with the machines, while Buffy gave the demon a mildly apologetic look and sat down with Ian at an open table.

Her interpretation was a little more upbeat than someone might expect, but Buffy couldn’t deny her singing talent, even while a little tipsy. By the end of the song, she was cavorting and air-guitaring all over the stage, and when she finished there was a huge round of applause. She sauntered back to their table victoriously, and the ‘fabulous’ Deathwok came back over too.

“So? Are you going to tell me my future? Maybe give a few stock tips?” Anya asked excitedly.

“My education wasn’t big on economics, but I don’t think your grasp of the ticker-tape is going to fail you any time soon. I’m more interested in the tips you’ve been giving other people.”

“Oh. You mean, like, my actual job?” Anya gave Buffy a sideways glance and not-so-quietly whispered to him, “She’s my boss, don’t make me look bad.”

He gave her a toothy smile, “You don’t have anything to worry about there, little valkyrie, I actually wanted to tell you that you’re more suited to it than you think.”

“I am? I mean, ah, I am,” Anya said.

“Yes indeedy. Maybe consider doing it in a more official capacity? With campaign speeches and ballot boxes?” Even as he was talking to Anya, he gave Buffy a significant look.

“We only have one person running for the empty City Council seats so far,” Buffy said hesitantly. “And he doesn’t exactly represent the demon population of the city very well, now that I think of it. Maybe you running too would be good?”

“YES! I mean, yes, sure, that sounds great.” She gave a surprised Ian a spontaneous hug and then ran up to the bar, claiming, “Victory drink!”

Buffy hoped her enthusiasm would last. Politics could be an ugly business.

* * *

They’d sat and chatted through a few more songs, and Buffy had been a little hesitant, but eventually she decided that if she wanted to ever actually find Cordelia in this city, she was going to have have to sing and let the psychic demon tell her her future. Perfectly normal situation. Her having had a couple conveniently not-carded drinks beforehand had nothing to do with her decision either.

After the very furry muppet-looking demon got down from the stage, Buffy got up and marched to the stage. Strangely enough, nobody argued about her position in line. The audio setup wasn’t as simple as Anya had made it look, and Buffy thought she might have some trouble getting things going. She wasn’t really sure what song to pick either, and was paging through indecisively.

**< KILL>**

Eventually, her eye fell on one song in particular. That… that could work pretty well. Might as well kill two birds with one stone, after all.

She didn’t have any of Anya’s dance moves or fancy audio effects, but the audience was absolutely rapt. Conversation ceased again, and a couple of demons that had been about to get up and leave sat right back down in their seats. When she finished, you could have heard a pin drop, at least until the annoying system started playing something else on its own. It kind of ruined the effect, and she hastily made it stop, but the audience certainly wasn’t laughing at her. She got some very polite applause as she got down from the stage, and she sought out Lorne. Earlier, he’d tried to tell them to just call him ‘The Host’, but she’d wrung his real name out of him pretty easily. If too many more people started going by ‘the’ titles she was going to feel like she was in a comic book or something.

He was rubbing his forehead as she walked up, and his eyes looked a little more bloodshot than they had earlier. “Are you OK? Had something that didn’t agree with you?” Most demons had a pretty good constitution, but she knew they could have weird allergies.

“More like being a little too close to the speakers at a concert.” He had poured himself a drink of something blue, and he downed it one shot. “That feels a little bit better.”

“Was I too loud? I didn’t really know how to use all that stuff very well,” Buffy apologized. She’d meant to put a little fear into the hearts of any nasty demons in the bar, but she hadn’t been looking to actually blow out their eardrums.

“Your voice was sweet as sugar, Buffy, it’s your aura that’s making like a hurricane. I think you might’ve voided the warranty on my Sanctuary spell,” Lorne was acting cheery enough about it, but it definitely sounded worrying.

She took a quick look around her, but everyone in the bar was giving them a lot of space. She lowered her voice a little anyway, “My powers have been acting up a little lately. Weirder than usual visions, faster than usual skills. Is it bad?” She hadn’t been thinking she’d get any answers about that today, but she was suddenly a little desperate for information now that it was on offer.

“Bad wasn’t really what I was getting, not exactly.” Lorne tilted a hand back and forth. “More like big. Very big. You’ve been eating your mystical wheaties, morning, noon, and night.”

“You probably don’t mean actual Wheat Flakes, right?” Buffy asked.

“This isn’t the kind of thing you buy in a store. I’ve never read a Slayer before, but I’ve got the tears in my eyes to tell that you aren’t inside normal operating parameters.” Lorne shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said though, it doesn’t really feel bad in an evil way. It’s just really primal. Savage, even. It feels old, but the Slayer’s been around for a very long time.”

“But whatever it is, it’s big,” Buffy said. “And the way you put it, it’s still happening?”

“Absolutely most definitely. It’s pumping through your blood, your mind, and your soul. It’s like you’re mainlining pure essence of Slayer somehow, instead of that more refined and normal vintage I can still feel mixed in with it.” Lorne took a sip of a new drink, and offered another one to Buffy.

She looked at the blue concoction a little warily, but decided the time was now if ever and took another sip herself. “I don’t know what could be causing it to be all weird like that though. It’s not like I was the first Slayer to ever fight a dragon.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “I can't tell you why or how, but it feels like more of it is trickling in even as we speak. Like some kind of siphon. Sorry I can’t be more help.”

Buffy pouted a little. “Well, I don’t suppose you know where Cordelia is? That is why I originally got up on stage, after all.”

He gave her a measuring look, “I think that it might work out best for everyone if you just follow along with what happens tomorrow. You won’t have to walk softly, but I recommend you get yourself a very, and I mean very, big stick.”

Buffy nodded, appreciating the advice, and wandered back to their table with her blue drink as Lorne turned to watch someone else performing on stage. Anya gave her a high five as she sat down. “Way to build your street cred and terrify everybody. That’s what you were going for, right?”

“Maybe it came on a little stronger than I intended,” Buffy said. The bar had quieted down a little again, and she noticed looking around that a lot of demons not-so-subtly were keeping an eye on her. Hopefully they’d be better behaved than usual for a while, at least.

“Was Lorne able to tell you where Cordelia is?” Ian asked, on point as usual.

“Not in so many words, though I did find out something about another thing I’ve been dealing with.” Buffy gave Anya a significant glance, but she wasn’t sure if she was sober enough to notice it. “He said the Cordy situation would mostly solve itself tomorrow, but that a really big weapon might be in order to help it along.”

“Well, with Cordelia’s history I can’t say I’m surprised,” Anya quipped. “Anyway, if we need weapons, I know just the place, it’s a great little hole in the wall. Kind of pricey though. Also, I don’t think it’s open this late.”

“I think it should be able to wait until morning,” Buffy said. “But by pricey, do you mean like, teenage girl pricey? Mayor of Sunnydale pricey? Small country pricey?” Weapons shopping sounded almost sinfully fun, but money was getting to be more and more of a concern.

“It’s not that bad,” Anya said. “We might need to write a check though.” Buffy looked askance at Ian, expecting him to mourn the poor budget.

“Some surprise expenses are more necessary than others,” he hedged. “I can’t imagine much on the budget could be more important than equipment a psychic told you you’ll need.”

“Tomorrow morning then,” Buffy said. She was a little concerned that nobody seemed very interested in limiting her semi-personal spending except for her, but in this case it really did make sense. Cordelia’s safety was way more important than money.

Suddenly, Anya turned to Ian, an idea striking her in the moment, “Hey, are you going to sing? We both sang, it was really great!”

“I, um, would prefer not to. I kind of have stage fright,” he said hesitantly. “If that’s OK that is.”

“It’s fine,” Buffy reassured him. She could see why he would be leery of getting onstage, though to be fair a lot of the demons in here weren’t much to look at either. “Don’t feel pressured to do anything on our account.”

Buffy settled into her seat and sipped at her drink again. Contrary to her first impression, Buffy found herself enjoying the atmosphere at Caritas, even with the ominous news. Not ‘bad in an evil way’ was a little encouraging, at least. The human-looking guy up on stage now was even kind of cute; he’d brought his own guitar, and was singing something about the sky. Buffy decided she’d better keep herself to spectating though; who knew what he looked like under that face, after all.


	30. S3.5E6: Cordelia Chase, and Where to Find Her IV

“Well here we are,” Anya said triumphantly.

“Took us long enough,” Buffy whined. “For a while this morning I thought the big monster would show up before we got the weapon.” Anya had been pretty destroyed after the partying last night, and their motel stay had ended up being extended until they either had to leave or pay for an extra night. Buffy really didn’t see what all the fuss about hangovers was, she felt just fine, but regardless they’d finally gotten going and Anya had directed Ian to the right part of town. A long search for parking later, and it was finally shopping time.

“It’s been a thousand years since the last time I got roaring drunk human. I kind of forgot what the next mornings were like,” Anya said apologetically.

“Anyways, is this actually it?” Buffy asked. “This place screams more knick-knacks than weapons to me.”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Ian said. “I imagine local law could be problematic for a weapons shop right in the middle of LA, this isn’t like Sunnydale where you can get away with anything.”

Anya walked in, seemingly eager to get out of the sunlight. “It’s not just for that. This stuff just sells better with humans. Everything we’re looking for is downstairs. And let me do most of the talking.” Inside, the walls and shelves were lined with tinkertoys and other strange contraptions, mixed in with some things that looked like old kitchen appliances. The only real unifying theme was that everything was made of metal; there was no wood or plastic to be seen, even as part of the furniture. The walls were heavy, solid stone, and the only windows had been at the front. The aisles twisted and turned as they made their way into the store, and the shop had a dim, stuffy atmosphere overall.

Before too long, a deep voice rang out, “Anyanka? Is that you?” A stout man with coal dark skin emerged from the stacks. He had a bald head, a long beard, and was covered in metal armor. He was a little shorter than Buffy, but he was very wide, and not really in a fat way. “Truly it is! I haven’t heard your steps since the earthquake of ‘71!”

“Ivgol. It’s a pleasure.” Anya smiled, and the two shared a hearty hug. “I hope that didn’t cause any damage here, I didn’t get to see you on my way out.”

“Ha! You should know I build stronger than that. These humans, always surprised when their mud huts come crashing down at the slightest breeze.” He let out a chuckle that sounded like rocks grinding together. “But what brings you here, and who are these companions of yours?”

“Buffy-The-Slayer, and Ian, our honored courier,” Anya replied, indicating each of them. “We’ve received a portent of battle, and Buffy comes in need of a weapon.” Buffy thought Anya was laying it on thick, but after a second, she wondered if this was actually how she used to talk back wherever she came from.

“A big one,” Buffy cut in, wondering if this guy was actually a Dwarf and how she could possibly ask. Giles had never told her about Dwarves. She would’ve thought she’d have found out about Dwarves at some point.

“A big one she says!” Ivgol gave her a hefty pat on the shoulder that she could tell would’ve knocked a normal human on their ass, but she was only moved a bit by the necessities of momentum. “Well, I can tell you’re a warrior with the strength for that, at least. Let’s all get to the armory, a place for real business.”

Ivgol led them behind the counter to a staircase that led down, down, down. It seemed almost like it was too far to be a normal basement, but they emerged into a vast chamber, as big as the shop and twice as tall, full of old machinery and stockpiled gear. Nothing looked particularly modern, but it put Giles’ weapon collection to shame. There was a huge selection of axes, picks, and hammers, a bunch of shields and sets of armor, and even a sprinkling of less dwarfy-themed weapons all around the walls, and the center of the room was dominated by an industrial looking set of forges and other less identifiable equipment.

Ivgol stopped and turned to face them once they had all entered. “Now, you must tell me of your battles and victories. The warrior must suit the weapon!”

Buffy felt a bit on the spot for a minute; bragging wasn’t really her thing, but an eye at Anya waving her along had her just start at the beginning. “Uh, the first big bad I killed was Lothos the vampire. I had to burn down a gym though.”

“Not afraid to destroy a little flimsy human property, sure!” he apparently didn’t care much about arson. “Who else have you defeated?”

“I beat the Master,” Buffy said. “He killed me, but I got better, and then his followers tried to make him get better later, but I smashed all his bones apart.”

“And persistent! But enough of vampires! What other foes have you slain?” Ivgol continued.

Buffy was happy not to talk about Angel. “I blew up the Judge with a rocket launcher. And the old mayor turned into an Olive Khan, and I led him into a school we blew up.” Now that she was summarizing, it struck her that a lot of her big victories seemed to involve collateral damage. She hoped that as mayor she wouldn’t have to pay for the next one.

“An ‘Olive Khan’, eh? With explosions! Newfangled, but effective I suppose. I think I know the ken of your spirit now.” Ivgol marched towards a section near the back with what looked like weights, or maybe anvils, and Buffy followed. “Lift this one!” He gave the third biggest a rap; it was about twice the size of Buffy’s head. “I must see your strength in use to judge properly.”

Buffy grabbed it with both hands and levered it up; it wasn’t really that heavy, just a bit awkward; she got the sense it had more mass than she did.

“Enough, hmm.” She dropped it back down as Ivgol pondered. “You should probably put on more weight, but this is a smithy, not a restaurant. A hammer I think, you could use the mass. Come.”

As they followed him, Buffy exchanged a quick look with Anya and Ian. Anya seemed a little surprised, for some reason (or maybe she was just still kind of hungover), and Ian just looked like he was dreading what the price tag of all this was going to be.

Their last destination downstairs was by a large collection of warhammers. Some were the small-headed variety she’d seen before in Giles’ collection, but others were big huge beasts that looked more like the image of a hammer she had in her head. He picked up a couple, holding them up to her before putting them back down, and even had her wave a few of the more medium ones around, before coming to a decision, taking up an oversized monster and handing it Buffy.

The head was a bent prism a foot long, with one end covered in rough teeth and the top and back sporting nasty spikes. The shaft was about four feet, including another spike on the bottom, and the whole object seemed to be cast out of one piece of steel, albeit with some kind of design on the side and mottling on the shaft for a better grip. It wasn’t as heavy as the weight from before had been, but it was still at least fifty pounds. For a moment Buffy was sure it would be too awkward to use effectively, nevermind that she was easily strong enough.

**< KILL>**

But she swung it back and forth a few times, trying different grips, and she quickly got the hang of it. It almost felt like it was cheating a little, helping her with leverage if not raw power. She got the feeling she could wreck some serious face with this thing in her hands. If Lorne wanted a big stick, she’d gotten it.

“I see the lady is happy with her prize!,” Ivgol chortled. “But we must discuss payment. I see your frail courier already fears the price I might exact.”

“You know how gold has gone up these days, Ivgol,” Anya wheedled. “You always told me you wanted to see your weapons in good homes, she’ll kill a lot of things with it, I’m sure.”

“Anyanka, I know you were always one to bargain,” he said. “But this is no charity, for less than ten pounds of gold I would be robbing myself!”

“Ten! Psh, I could have Coo-Hatch steel for twenty!” Anya argued. “Surely five pounds will fill your belly for months.”

“The Coo-Hatch!,” he made an offended noise. “Their work is all flash and no substance. Worn after mere decades, prone to break at the slightest fire or frost. I should raise the price, but because we are friends I will say nine, and the young girl’s joy will make it eight. I cannot go lower.”

Anya was about to reply, but surprisingly, Ian interrupted her, “Perhaps we could make a trade instead? We recovered a bit of mithril ore from one of his stashes recently.”

Some more dickering followed between the three of them that Buffy didn’t interrupt, half because she could spend the time playing with her hammer. Eventually it was settled that twenty ounces of mithril would pay for it, with more dealing to be discussed at a later date. She was a little worried that doing the actual exchange might take too long, but Ivgol seemed happy enough to take them at their word.

As they left, Ivgol had a last request, “Send word of your battles! I would know what warriors my hammer kills.” He’d walked them back to the storefront, but pointedly avoided stepping into the sunlight. Maybe he was some kind of Dwarf vampire? Buffy made a mental note to ask Anya about it later, but he seemed benevolent enough for now.

As they started walking back to their hard fought parking spot, nobody really paid Buffy’s giant hammer any mind. They probably thought it was a movie prop, and Buffy wondered if she could work it in as a campaign symbol somehow. Anya broke up her woolgathering though, “So, what do we do now?”

“Well, Lorne said to get a big weapon and implied things would just kind of happen.” Buffy looked around expectantly, but didn’t see Cordelia running around, or any giant things to slay either. “Maybe this was all just a really effective marketing strategy?”

Before Buffy’s new doubts could go any further, there was a ringing from Ian. He fished out an actual honest cellphone and clicked it to answer. “Cynthia? Did something go wrong? Oh, sure, here’s Buffy.”

“Hi Cynthia. Mayor of Sunnydale here, complete with optional accessory.” Buffy said.

“I see,” Buffy wasn’t sure how she could without more information, but she went on anyway, unperturbed, “Chief Waters found some information for you, and with you out of radio range I offered to act as a relay. Billing records from BT&T’s LA office indicate that a Cordelia Chase moved into 176 Guildenstern Ave, Apartment 4B, about two weeks ago.”

“That’s great!” Buffy paused for a second. “You couldn’t get us directions too, could you?”

* * *

Between the more utilitarian outfit she’d put on today, and the gigantic hammer she was carrying around, Buffy expected to make a rather different impression on Cordelia than she was sort of hoping for last night. Rather than Buffy the cool new grown up mayor, she was same old Buffy, carrying around weapons and looking to kill things. Cordelia probably had done actual acting parts already, and had real jobs she’d gotten by means other than violence.

Or at least, Buffy had been thinking that as they drove there. But the apartment building she was living in was a little… well, there were enough cockroaches that Buffy could hear some of them scuttling in the walls. It made her tempted to go after them with her new hammer, if not for the pesky property damage charges. But anyway, Cordelia was probably doing fine. Everyone had to live in skanky apartments in the city sometimes.

They reached the flimsy-looking door to 4B, and Buffy was about to knock, but Cordelia opened the door before she had the chance. Buffy would’ve thought Cordelia was going to be the most surprised one, but that definitely wasn’t true. Cordelia Chase had either somehow gained a truly ridiculous amount of weight distributed in a very unusual way, or she was about eight months pregnant.

“Buffy! What?” Cordelia said, gesturing at the hammer.

“Cordelia! What?” Buffy said, gesturing at Cordelia.

“Anya! What?” Everyone looked at her confusedly. “No one was going to do me. Go on though.”

“What are you guys doing here? How did you even find this place? And who’s middle management?” Cordelia asked. Ian took a step back.

“We were worried that you wouldn’t answer your phone, so we came down to check on you,” Buffy said. “And don’t worry about Ian, he works for me.”

“People work for you now? Is vengeance girl working for you too? Do you just kill things, or are you doing demolitions now too?” Cordelia asked sarcastically.

“I’m the mayor! It’s this whole big thing,” Buffy said. “It’s been in the papers and everything. But that isn’t important now, what happened to you?”

“Oh, right.” Cordelia looked down, as if to reassure herself she was still pregnant. “That’s a good point, I really have to get going, I don’t have time for your craziness now.” Cordelia left the doorway and locked it behind her, then started ambling down the hall as best as her condition allowed.

“Our craziness? How long has this even been going on?” Buffy asked, following her.

“Well, I woke up this morning, Wilson was gone, and I was all this. I totally denied and panicked for hours, but they helped me get it all figured out. I just need to be a responsible mother.” Cordelia said matter-of-factly.

“This morning!” Buffy exclaimed.

“I know! What a jerk huh?” Cordelia said, pretty clearly misunderstanding.

“Who are ‘they’, exactly?” Ian ventured.

“Oh, that’s right, I guess it would make sense that you couldn’t hear them,” Cordelia said. “I can hear my babies talking to me. They’re telling me where to go.” She stopped for a second, looking worried. “Do any of you have anything to eat? I’m worried about their health, but I didn’t have much left in my apartment to begin with. I got some money last night but didn’t have a chance to go shopping.”

Cordelia was pretty clearly deep in the crazy, or else had just had a total psychotic break. Buffy looked at Anya, hoping she’d have some clue what was going on, and she just said, “Demon pregnancies can be really fast, even if it’s actually a human cross.” The face she made behind Cordelia’s back made it clear that she didn’t think there was anything Cordelia about these particular babies though. “Psychic links aren’t unheard of either.”

They left the building and exited onto the street, “Look everyone, it’s been unreal, but I have to make my way across town and probably get some fast food on the way.” She sighed. “You might be able to play around at politics, Buffy, but it’s time for me to grow up.”


	31. S3.5E6: Cordelia Chase, and Where to Find Her V

Buffy thought fast; Lorne had told her to follow along, maybe he meant it literally? But she’d have to keep Cordelia calm. “You know, Cordelia, you’re right, you’ve got a lot on your plate now. But maybe we could help? Do you need a ride to where you’re going?”

Cordelia’s expression changed, and she looked a little contrite. “That would be a huge help. I was worried about how far I’d have to go, honestly. Couldn’t be good for the babies. Sorry I sort of bit your head off there, it’s probably hormones.”

“That or the mind-,” Anya started to say, but Buffy elbowed her lightly and cut her off.

“All those worries on your mind! Let’s put those to rest and get to the car everyone.” Buffy shuffled everyone forward, shooting Anya an annoyed look as she did. She mouthed ‘Keep her calm’, hoping Anya would get the idea.

After a few blocks, they finally reached their parking spot and piled into the Subaru. Cordelia had to show Ian where to go, so she took the front passenger seat as Anya and Buffy climbed into the back. The hammer might’ve made it cramped under normal circumstances, but neither of them was very big so it slotted in at their feet without much of a problem. They started their slow crawl through LA’s daily monster traffic jam and Buffy worried a bit about how this was going to work.

Despite Lorne’s advice, Cordelia was already freaky-pregnant, and even if she led them to the lair or whatever she didn’t see how killing things was going to change that. It was possible more people were still getting affected and the root of the problem needed to be solved eventually, but saving Cordelia was important too. It’d probably be easier to identify the problem after a good look at the culprit though, or it might even be necessary to use some gross corpse part, so in the end dealing with this first was probably better anyway.

“Oh, can we stop for drive-through?” Cordy asked hopefully as a Doublemeat appeared at the next intersection. “I know it’s kind of gross, but such is the life of a mom.”

Ian was carefully avoiding committing to any decision, and Anya was still chastened from earlier, so Buffy spoke up for everyone, “That’s fine, just get whatever you want Cordy.” It was possible food could accelerate things, but on the other hand if she didn’t eat the monsters inside her might do some terrible mom cannibalism thing.

After decimating 3 burgers and a large coke, Cordelia got a little more talkative. “So you’re the mayor of Sunnydale now. Was it some kind of you-kill-it-you-buy-it thing?”

“Sort of. The town kind of needs a firm hand, or it’s even worse than usual,” Buffy said. “And firm hands, that’s me I guess.”

“Too bad they don’t have commercials for those,” Cordelia said. She was really surprisingly normal outside the demon baby topic.

“All the Hollywood people I met last night kind of suggested I could be in something, but I don’t really have the time, It’s sad.” Cordelia’s head whipped around and Buffy got a death glare. “I mean, umm, it was probably all talk really. Getting parts is hard,” she backpedaled. Maybe Cordelia hadn’t been doing so well here after all. She was a little mollified and settled back into her seat, while Anya mouthed ‘Keep her calm’ back at Buffy mockingly.

The group settled into a tense silence as they drove, Ian navigating the LA traffic with an ease that must have been born from long experience. Cordelia munched on some fries left in the bag, Anya looked out the window, and Buffy twiddled her thumbs playing with the backspike of her hammer. Eventually, the traffic eased up as they passed into a sort of warehouse district, and Cordelia started to get ever more impatient until she finally declared, “OK, this is it. Thanks for the ride, but it’s time for my big moment now.”

Cordelia stepped out of the car, and Buffy came out as well, hammer in hand. There was an awkward moment where they just looked at each other, and Cordy made an annoyed face. “Ugh, I really should’ve known.”

“I mean, it’s kind of what I do Cordy,” Buffy said apologetically.

“Well fine, see if I care.” And like a switch, she turned and clumsily jogged for the closest building, screaming, “Master watch out! The Slayer’s here and she has a giant hammer we have to run away!”

Buffy went after her, though only at a walk really, because she had no idea what she could even do if she caught her. She got through the door just behind her, but then stopped short for a second as the stink hit her. The inside smelled worse than a sewer, and she’d been in enough sewers in the past few years to know.

It was tall and deep, with multiple levels of pipes and canisters stacked on both sides and all sorts of chains and machinery for moving stuff around; it was probably an abandoned chemical plant or something. Juxtaposed with this mundane normalcy was a sort of weird hexagonal jacuzzi filled with green slime and a ragged hole in the back that looked like it led into some kind of cave. The slime jacuzzi had a couple girls in it already, but Cordelia was shouting for everyone to evacuate and they didn’t seem to know what to do.

Before any headway could be made, an absolutely massive form appeared from the cave entrance. “Calm yourself and cease your prattle, woman. A vampire slayer is of little concern to one such as I.” He was at least fifteen feet tall, practically filling the warehouse to the top, and dripped with more of the same fetid slime in the jacuzzi. He was mostly humanoid, though he looked kind of melted, with ridged skin, a protruding jaw, and compact horns.

Buffy readied her hammer in both hands and narrowed her eyes, stepping around the jacuzzi and squaring off with the giant. “You talk to Cordelia like that and expect her to stick around? I’m sensing a divorce counselor in your future.”

“Your insults are as obscure as they are meaningless,” The Haxil’s voice was deep, and he seemed surprisingly intelligent, despite his disgusting appearance. “If you wish for a battle, you will have one, though I will forgive your impertinence should you mother a brood of mine instead.”

Buffy’s utter disgust left her speechless for a second, but Cordelia filled the silence from where she was hiding now, at the edge of the cave, “Hey, what am I, chopped liver? I have child-bearing hips you know!”

The Haxil actually rolled his yellow eyes, turning back to chastise her. “I said to be silent! When last I came to spawn the women here were much more obedient.” Buffy decided the time for talk was over though, and took advantage of its distraction, dashing forward with the dwarf hammer primed to swing.

“Deceitful wench!” The Haxil turned back, reaching down to sweep at Buffy with one of his massive arms. She somersaulted over it without missing a beat, and used the momentum to drive a brutal swing into the monster’s shin. There was a deafening crack, but the limb didn’t visibly snap, and the Haxil’s enraged retaliatory blow with the other arm sent Buffy flying under the factory’s mezzanine to crash into a wall. She barely kept hold of her weapon as she landed and prepared to roll away from the next attack, but the Haxil wasn’t still coming. He’d gone down to one knee and was grasping at his shin, though he kept his eyes on her threateningly.

“I told you she was dangerous, you idiot! Don’t just kneel there, do something!” Cordelia said.

“She isn’t dangerous. She’s just a nuisance.” The Haxil didn’t get up, but he reached over and grabbed at a long piece of thick metal piping, ripping it from its place under the overhang. Then he started swinging it and poking it at Buffy like someone trying to kill a mouse with a baseball bat.

“I know you’re all mind controlled, but do you have to be so enthusiastic about this Cordy?” Buffy got to her feet just in time, and jumped and dodged around to avoid the improvised weapon. She eventually backed out of its reach, looking for an opportunity to climb up and get on the same level as the Haxil’s head.

He let out a frustrated growl, and pulled the piping back, only to ball it up in his fists with a shriek of tortured metal. He chucked it at Buffy like a fastball, but she’d been expecting it and swung her hammer like a baseball bat, knocking it away. It didn’t fly back at him though, instead going off at an angle and flying right over the gross jacuzzi with the other girls in it.

“Hey, watch it!” One of them said, as one of the others dived underwater in a panic. The projectile ended up crashing into a pile of other stuff under the overhang on the other side, and the Haxil decided to abandon his ranged attempts and crawled towards Buffy warily, still obviously favoring his shin.

“Sorry.” Buffy supposed that nobody involved in the fight actually wanted to endanger any of the girls, but with them in such a central position it made things a little fraught. She decided to try to use that to her advantage, dashing up to jump on the edge of the raised jacuzzi, and then springing from that height up to the level above. This brought her back into the Haxil’s reach, but he was too hesitant and missed her with another swipe.

She leapt again, now with a height advantage compared to the kneeling giant, taking a hard midair swing at its head. He was quick though, and managed to get an arm in the way to block. It groaned at the heavy impact, this time visibly breaking a bone, but he still managed to catch her in midair with his other hand, and he started to squeeze.

“I’d never have thought I would waste such a maiden, but truly, you’re not worth the trouble.” The Haxil wasn’t actually that much stronger than her, but his grip had her hammer arm trapped, and his ridged skin was too resilient for her left hand to hurt him at the awkward angle. She was too high in the air to kick off of anything either, and couldn’t get any leverage.

“That’s right, finish her off! She’s too tricky,” Cordelia cheered. The Haxil’s other arm was broken past usability, but he still had his mouth full of wicked teeth. He pulled Buffy closer, and she almost passed out at the smell of his breath up close.

**< KILL>**

Just before he bit down, Buffy managed to get her left hand around his thumb claw, and brutally bent it back, as if she was ripping off a fingernail. The Haxil screamed now, in more pain than he’d been in from either of the other two attacks, as the claw almost came off in her grip, and his hand reflexively tried to let go.

**< KILL>**

She wasn’t having any of that now though, and still hanging onto his hand she whipped her hammer around through his gaping mouth, shattering most of his teeth and ripping his gums into a slimy pulp. He thrashed wildly, but she just used the motion to launch onto his head, hanging on one of his stubby horns. Before he could react, she spun the hammer and drove the backspike directly into his nearer eye. He desperately tried to shake her away, but it was for naught as she changed her grip to swing it around further and drive the same spike into his other eye as well.

After that, it was pretty much over. The blind demon had lost all reason, and struck out madly at her without much semblance of a strategy. He was extremely resilient, but even once she was back on the ground, she just dodged around him and kept whaling on him with her hammer. Eventually, she had him all the way down on the ground, and just kept swinging at his head until his skull cracked, distorting completely behind the still unbroken skin.

She’d had demons come back from worse, so she went on pulverizing his brain (some of it sprayed out of his ruined eyes) until Cordelia said. “Uh, I think that’s enough Buffy.” She risked a glance up, and then did a double take, boggling at Cordelia’s total lack of pregnancy. The other girls started to freak out and bailed from the jacuzzi in their soaked white robes, all also newly baby-free.

Buffy was definitely a little beat up, and she was also covered in slime, blood, and guts. At least her pretty dress was safe, but that was cold comfort since she didn’t have a third change of clothes. “So, back to normal up there Cordelia, or are you going to chew me out some more for killing your baby-daddy?” she asked, leaning on her hammer.

“I am glad to announce the end of the sale on family-sized Cordelia,” she said, after worriedly checking for stretch marks. “Is it sad that in retrospect he kind of reminds me of some boyfriends I actually had? They never listen.”

“Tell me about it,” Buffy said, but then an ominous feeling raced down her spine. First, she looked at the Haxil again, but in retrospect it was really thoroughly extremely dead, though it didn’t show any signs of disintegrating. Then she heard hurried footsteps from near the entrance, and turned around to see what it was. Some buried instinct told her not to bother wielding her hammer again.

Finally getting a good look at the scene, Angel’s steps slowed down, but he was in a little too much shock to drop the giant canister he was lugging around.

Buffy’s brain started to slow to a halt, and she forced herself to stay cool. She wasn’t going to let this shake her. She’d grown and stuff; it’d almost been a whole month. She would quip, as she always did in the face of danger. “Angel. Is that a big tank of liquid nitrogen, or are you just happy to see me?”

He dropped it, letting it roll off to the side. He managed to get out a “Buffy,” but then one of the girls from the jacuzzi moved towards him.

“Angel, um.” She slowed down, and gave Buffy a troubled glance. “Do you know each other?” Buffy felt a spike of jealousy, but she tamped it down. There was no way it could be anything but professional. She hoped.

Before she could manage to say anything else, Anya and Ian walked into the factory too, accompanied by another guy. He took in the situation at a glance, before his eyes widened and he said, “Alright, let’s have everyone get outside and away from the big demon corpse and give these two a bit of space, right?”

The jacuzzi girls seemed to welcome some direction in the confusing situation, and Anya and Ian helped the unknown Angel-friend-guy lead them out of the building. Buffy turned and gave Cordelia an almost hopeful glance, but she said, “Big thanks for saving me from the fate of the teenage mom, but I’ve had enough relationship drama for the day. We'll catch up after.” With that, she took off to catch up with the rest of them, giving Angel a wave on the way by.

“So, is this where you went?” Buffy said, but obviously he was here now, so she clarified, “I mean, have you been here all month? In LA?”

“Yeah,” he answered, a little guiltily. “I thought it would be easier if-”

“Sure.” Buffy said shortly, but then she bit her tongue. “You couldn’t have called?”

“I did,” he said apologetically. “Your mother kept picking up though, and, well.”

“Oh,” Buffy said. She was acutely aware of how covered in ick she was, how bad the factory smelled, and how this was totally an awful format for this conversation in every way. It didn’t help that he got to run in looking smooth and perfect. She soldiered on. “I’ve been kind of busy lately.”

“Yeah, I heard. Well, read,” Angel said. “It’s a lot of responsibility.”

She bit back the urge to snipe at him again. He made it sound like she was a tween getting a pet or something, but he was probably just being Angel. She changed the subject instead. “So what are you doing here, and why the science experiment?”

“Well, Doyle had a vision,” he replied hesitantly.

“You’re going to have to unvague that for me,” she said.

“That Irish guy who was here. He’s a link to the Powers. There was a pregnant girl and an ugly demon and we just sort of followed the case.” He walked closer to her, getting a better view of the corpse. “This is really pretty impressive. Did you know they’re immune to fire and the skin can’t be cut?”

“So you got all smart with it.” Buffy felt a little lucky that she’d had the right tool for the job, despite not having much of a clue, but then again she’d had some guidance of her own. “I guess I’m just an old-fashioned kind of girl.” She picked up her hammer again, fidgeting with it. The mess hadn’t stuck to it at all; it was still shiny as new.

They both just stood there as the conversation died, looking at each other. Angel took another few steps, and he was close, right up in her space, but then he backed up again. It hurt. “I… Buffy, I didn’t want this to happen so soon, I-”

“Wanted, to what, give me space for a normal life?” She couldn’t stop herself from throwing that in his face. “My normal life running the Hellmouth, defending police stations, and dealing with kidnappings?”

“Buffy, I can’t even walk with you during the day. We could never-”, Angel was going with the same old, same old, but Buffy interrupted again.

“Oh big whoop, so you’re a vampire. I’ve got a vampire working for me. Did you even know Harmony died on Graduation Day? She got better.” She knew the situation with Harmony wasn’t normal, but really, what ever was?

His eyes widened in alarm. “You know that’s not how it works Buffy, it isn’t safe. Look, maybe she’s playing some kind of long game, but without a soul-”

“Without a soul, she still has common sense. More than you. How can you…” She had to stop to get her thoughts back into a single line. “How can you just leave to protect my normal life, when I can’t even have one? I’m never going to have one. Mayor of Sunnydale is as normal as it’s going to get, country clubs by day and demon mob bosses by night!”

Angel looked pained. “Buffy, please, stop. I don’t want to fight. You know we can’t go back to where we were. It’s a terrible idea for so many reasons.”

She swallowed, and gave up. The curse was always going to be between them, and even if it wasn’t, she was sick of feeling this way. “I’m sorry. This has just been so painful. I’m just going to go.”


	32. S3.5E6: Cordelia Chase, and Where to Find Her VI

“The first step in any break up is ice cream,” Cordelia said wisely. She handed bowls to Buffy and Anya, and then journeyed back across the sofa bed to get some herself.

After slime-proofing the cars with some tarps lying around at the factory and getting everyone home using the two available cars it was late enough that nobody wanted to go back to Sunnydale that night. Cordelia was hosting Buffy and Anya for an improvised sleepover and Ian was spending some more time with his cousin. The less said about whatever happened to Angel and his sketchy friend the better.

“Technically, her first step was to kill the mayor and take his city,” Anya said between scoops.

“I never actually got to do the ice cream step when it happened,” Buffy said. “There was the crying step and the violence step and then the ‘actually happening’ step and then I was suddenly mayor.”

“Well look at him!” Anya said encouragingly. “He’s just some guy wandering the streets of LA, helping the helpless or whatever. You’re totally winning the breakup.”

“It didn’t feel like it when we talked. Could it have been at a worse time? I was so totally gross.” Cordelia had been nice enough to lend her some clothes after she got cleaned up. The ones she was wearing were trashed and her mood and the setting didn’t exactly lend themselves to putting her nice dress back on. The casual T-shirt and sweats were pretty baggy on her, but baggy clothes fit the mood.

“But you did kill the giant rapist demon he was hunting,” Anya said. “I bet he felt really upstaged and useless after that.”

“So you’re two out of three on the breakup scoreboard.” Cordelia sat down on the other side of Buffy with her own bowl. “That’s still winning, right?”

“Sometimes winning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Buffy groused. Looking for more distraction, she grabbed the remote and clicked through some channels on the TV, which was the room’s other main feature aside from the pulled out sofa. Cordy’s antenna wasn’t the best though, and the talkative late night hosts were troubled by waves of static.

“You should get right back on the horse,” Cordelia said. “After that thing you had with Owen, was there a giant mope fest? Nope, you were right after Angel. That’s what you need to do. It should be easy to find some guy, you’re like, the ‘it’ thing.”

“You even remember that? I was totally the one who broke up with him, anyway. He got the contractual obligations of ice cream and moping. And it was barely a thing.” A cockroach tried to skitter by, and Buffy reflexively killed it with the side of the remote.

“Well, you did get him from right under my nose,” Cordelia grumbled. “And it would have looked totally lame to be his rebound, so of course Harmony dated him next, and after that it was of the no.”

“Harmony dated Owen?” Buffy asked. She felt sort of disturbed by this news, but she wasn’t sure why.

“What planet were you living on sophomore year? Anya wasn’t even there and she probably knew that!” Cordelia said.

“I did.” Anya admitted. “It’s a classic tale of tragic love, and also blowjobs under the bleachers.”

“Eww.” Buffy frowned. “I hope she’s more careful about stuff like that now, with, you know, the teeth and all.” She really hoped she wasn’t asking Gwen for tips at the suck house or something.

“I don’t think she’s been dating anyone,” Anya said. “Which is kind of weird, now that I think of it.”

Buffy decided to change the subject, “Well, whatever Harmony’s deal is, dating is pretty hard for me right now. Everyone around is either too old, or working for me, or both.”

“You dated Angel, and age is a problem for you?” Cordelia said.

“Men have sex with women working for them all the time.” Anya waved off that objection. “I’d say they deserve to get the tables turned on them for once!”

“You guys know what I mean!” Buffy said. “Everyone is all with the ‘Ms. Summers, or the Mayor Summers, or even the ‘Miss Mayor’. It’s hard to do small talk when people won’t even say your first name. Plus you can’t really start with a clean slate if people knew about you from the newspaper before you even met them.”

“Just be more aggressive,” Cordelia suggested, “I had to practically batter some guys over the head before they asked me out, I’d think you’d be good at that.”

“Literal battering over the head is probably not a good idea. Except well, in the case you had today.” Buffy narrowed her eyes playfully at Cordelia “You got all mind-controlled and baby-implanted. Shouldn’t you be the one we’re trying to cheer up tonight?”

“I bounce back quickly. Plus, didn’t even get covered in slime.” Cordelia paused. “At least it was an exciting day.”

Buffy wasn’t sure if she should say anything, but that was probably as good an opening she was going to get as any. “Having a little bit of trouble with the acting career?”

“Maybe a little.” Cordelia kept a straight face for a few moments before cracking. “OK, it totally sucks. I can’t get a foot in anywhere, not even the lame commercial parts that are mostly just your feet. I was going to run out of money this week if not for that demon gambling thing last night, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get back in there. Wilson was an evil sleezeball, but it was a good date.”

Buffy had somewhere she was going to go in the conversation, but her comment threw Buffy for a loop. “Wait, you mean the fight the promoter guy was talking about? This place?” She dug out the ‘XXI’ pass from the night before and showed it to Cordelia.

“Yup, that’s the one.” She inspected the ticket. “Too bad this thing is dated. The people there have tons of money but they don’t know much about demons, that’s for sure.”

“There was pit fighting and we missed it?” Anya complained. “Well, I guess we had fun anyway.”

“They seemed pretty into me, for what it’s worth,” Buffy mused. “Maybe we could just show up?”

“Nah,” Cordelia said. “I was a little lucky with what showed up on their card anyway, there was one of those tall slashy dinosaur things. We got rid of one last summer when you were away, total pushovers compared to how they look. If I want to survive long term here I’m going to need to get actual jobs.”

“Well, it is all about who you know in Hollywood” Anya mused, “And I do know a few people in the industry right now. I could make some phone calls for you, things could get a lot easier.”

“You do? You’d do that for me?” she asked excitedly.

“Of course I would,” said Anya. “After all, if you go broke and come back to Sunnydale, Xander might start making eyes at you again.”

* * *

Buffy woke up to the sounds of Cordelia talking on the phone and a morning show host babbling about Hollywood news in the background. She stretched on the sofa bed and opened her eyes to a sunny room; Anya was by the phone with Cordy and she’d been the last one asleep. She must’ve really needed the rest.

She absently killed another cockroach as she managed to start processing Cordelia’s conversation “- like to think of myself as a method actress, so that’d be really great.” She paused to let the other person talk, and Buffy couldn’t make out the other side of the conversation. “Sure, I’ll be down there at 3! I’ll make sure to… huh, I guess she hung up. Well, whatever, score.”

“See? All you need to succeed in Hollywood is to call in a favor with somebody to get parts,” Anya said. “And Xander says my vengeance days weren’t productive. Sure, sometimes the customer is a little shocked when her ex’s face gets covered in boils, but the satisfaction comes in time.”

“Hey, Buffy, you’re awake. Also, you’re on TV.” Cordelia observed, pointing behind her.

“What?” Buffy rolled over to face the television and saw some photos of herself taken both in Sunnydale and over the last few days in LA pass over the screen.

A perky female voiceover accompanied the images. “Buffy Summers: At just eighteen years old, this recent high school hottie is the youngest mayor in US History. But is she just a flash in the pan? Or will she be a fixture in area politics for years to come?”

The stills flying over the screen switched subjects, now showing the destroyed Sunnydale High and a stock photo of Wilkins. “As many of you might already know, Mayor Summers hasn’t won any election yet; she was appointed interim mayor after the disappearance and suspected death of Richard Wilkins the Third. Mayor Wilkins’ family had been mayors of Sunnydale since way way back; literally a hundred years, when the town was first founded! And not everyone’s comfortable with the inexperience of the brash LA native in comparison.” At this point they finished the slide show with an image that must’ve been taken today of her walking the streets with her giant hammer.

“Am I brash?” Buffy worried. “Is that bad?” Cordelia and Anya just gave her looks.

The screen finally transitioned to a slick-looking studio set where the hostess was standing. She was a stereotypical blonde twenty-something with a thousand-dollar dress and a pasted-on smile. “One of them is doing something about it. Carl Gervais could give Buffy a run for her money in the photogenics department, but he has the experience and history to go with it. The third generation Sunnydaler is throwing his hat into the ring today, and he’s joining us right now!”

The scene flashed to Maple Court in Sunnydale, where a young-looking guy in a sharp suit was looking into the camera. He already had a ‘Gervais 1999’ button pinned to it. He looked a little like the old guy Buffy had met at the Country Club, but was way younger and better looking.

“Hi Katie! I’m glad to confirm that I’m running for Mayor of Sunnydale, and I’m just as honored to be on your show as I will be to serve this proud city,” His smile shined as he gestured to the thriving businesses behind him. Buffy wondered how anyone could be so enthusiastic before noon.

“So Carl, some of the people frustrated with the current situation might say you’re just another pretty face. What else do you have to offer?” Katie said. The camera changed to a split screen to include both of them.

“I’m glad you asked! Well, first of all, nothing against Sunnydale’s fine public institution, but I think a degree from Harvard Business School proves I’m more than just my good looks,” he said the last part self-effacingly, giving a little smirk at the end. Meanwhile, Buffy’s expression started to darken.

“Can you deal with Sunnydale’s troubled streets though?” Katie responded. “Mayor Summers may not have gone to college, but she’s been to the school of hard knocks, and the tabloids are rife with stories about her personal approach to handling crime. Will you be able to do the same?”

“Now look, I don’t mean to disparage Ms. Summers’ efforts,” he said. “But one person can only do so much by punching their problems away. What Sunnydale needs is an economic solution to break the chains of poverty and treat the causes of crime, not the symptoms. I’ve already had years of experience in real estate development, and I think that’s just what Sunnydale needs to reach for a brighter future.”

“Promises like that are a dime a dozen in politics,” Katie taunted. “Some people would say a hand in a fist is worth a building in a bush.”

“This is no empty promise though.” The irritating smirk was back. “I’m happy to announce I’ve already reached a provisional agreement with Wolfram and Hart, a successful law firm those of you watching in LA might’ve heard about. If elected, I promise I can bring a major branch of the firm to Sunnydale. The development will be great for the economy, and the new jobs for the city once it’s complete will have a lasting positive impact bigger than any gang arrest or drug bust.”

“Well, it looks like you can talk the talk and walk the walk! Any last words before we go to commercial?” The camera flipped back to him entirely again.

“I’d just like to tell everyone in Sunnydale watching to come to the polls on August 31st, and vote for progress! Let’s build a better city together.” The screen flipped away to a car commercial, and Buffy let herself fall back from her anxious sitting position to stare up at the dirty ceiling.

“Well, this is bad,” Anya said.

“Tell me about it. As if we didn’t have enough problems, now some silver spoon kid is running against me.” Buffy said. “It had to be Harvard, ugh.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Anya said. “Well, not just that. Wolfram and Hart is a law firm that does supernatural stuff, I’ve run across them a few times in the last couple centuries. They definitely know about the Hellmouth and everything.

“And no doubt that means they have some nefarious plot,” Cordelia added melodramatically.

“Double ugh.”


End file.
